Search results for ""School of Life""

Great dates are made up of great conversations: ones where we find out more about one another, discover what makes us both tick, share some of what we like and reveal how we see the world. This is a collection of cards that can be used out on a date to help provoke the best kinds of discussion. This pack includes 52 cards, each one posing an intriguing question or setting a challenge, designed to provoke, entertain and stimulate. As a bonus, the cards are graded according to how probing they are (Easy, Medium and Hard), so that you can playfully match the discussion with the flow of an evening. Example Questions: How might you entertain a five-year-old child that a friend left you with for an hour or two? Sketch the course of three previous relationships you’ve had. Without thinking too much, complete the sentence: ‘The problem with most of the people I’ve been on a date with is...’ Who would you like to go back and apologise to - and for what? Describe your first kiss? What are the main points you would like to be covered in a speech at your funeral?

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The effectiveness of any organisation or business comes down to how skilled everyone is at collaborating: how well we’re able to explain ourselves, listen to others and approach challenges in a spirit of good will and pragmatism. Luckily, we don’t have to be born with collaborative skills; they can be taught, mastered and regularly rehearsed. With the right tools to hand, we can harmonise diverse backgrounds and thinking styles and end up working fruitfully with people of very different personalities. Collaboration is a tool for helping people work together better: 52 exercises designed to build empathy, insight and trust between colleagues. Intended to transform the atmosphere in teams, it prompts people to participate in a range of tasks and thinking exercises that strengthen their ability to cooperate and lend them insight into how others’ minds work. In a playful and often entertaining way, this toolkit aims to achieve something critical: the creation of a team that can work seamlessly and imaginatively together. Examples Strength Appraisal Everyone should write down what they see as the key strength of every other member of the team (for example, that they’re empathetic, organised or tenacious). Then, going around the room, every team member should have their perceived strengths read out to them. Look out for any common themes that emerge and think about how the wider team’s perceptions might differ from your own. Unscrewing Screw-Ups Take it in turns to share the biggest mistake you’ve made at work – for example, deleting the file for an important presentation, placing an expensive order for the wrong type of printer ink, or forgetting the name of a major client during a meeting. Let the team suggest what lessons might be learned from the screw-up, and how the experience might have been beneficial in the long run.

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A guide to modern times that explores the challenges living in the 21st century can pose to our mental wellbeing. The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine and transport. But it can also feel as though modern times have plunged us ever deeper into greed, despair and agitation. Seldom has the world felt more privileged and resource-rich yet also worried, blinkered, furious, panicked and self-absorbed. How to Survive the Modern World is the ultimate guide to navigating our unusual times. It identifies a range of themes that present acute challenges to our mental wellbeing. The book tackles our relationship to the news media, our ideas of love and sex, our assumptions about money and our careers, our attitudes to animals and the natural world, our admiration for science and technology, our belief in individualism and secularism – and our suspicion of quiet and solitude. In all cases, the book helps us to understand how we got to where we are, digging deeply and fascinatingly into the history of ideas, while pointing us towards a saner individual and collective future. The emphasis isn’t just on understanding modern times but also on knowing how we can best relate to the difficulties these present. The book helps us to form a calmer, more authentic, more resilient and sometimes more light-hearted relationship to the follies and obsessions of our age. If modern times are (in part) something of a disease, this is both the diagnostic and the soothing, hope-filled cure.

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The modern world can present the body as a machine that just needs to be regularly exercised. However, it is a remarkably sensitive organ in which a lot of our pain and hope is stored and that we need to interpret and handle with subtlety. This impact of our body upon our mind is something which needs to be explored as it is easy to pay attention to one more than the other and to to ignore the crucial balance between the two. This is a book filled with reflections and exercises designed to help us live more harmoniously and maturely within both mind and body. It gives guidance on how to calm our minds with bodily exercises that work on the real sources of our anxieties. It suggests how to be less rigid in, and timid about, our bodies and how to relax into them in a way we might not have done for far too long. It offers ideas on how to accept the way we look, and how to treat the body in order for it to assist the mind in yielding its very best ideas. The impacts of activities such as singing, dancing and art are explored along with the liberation of spirit that these might offer. This is a book, both theoretical and practical, that will improve our relationship between our physical and mental selves and allow us a route to a life of greater self-assurance, wisdom and freedom to be ourselves.

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Therapeutic exercises to help couples nurture patience, forgiveness and humour. Here is a workbook containing the very best exercises that any couple can undertake to help their relationship function optimally; exercises to foster understanding, patience, forgiveness, humour and resilience in the face of the many hurdles that invariably arise when you try to live with someone else for the long term. Couples are guided to have particular conversations, analyse their feelings, explain parts of themselves to one another and undertake rituals that clear the air and help recover hope and passion. The goal is always to unblock channels of feeling and improve communication. Not least, doing exercises together is – at points – simply a lot of fun.

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A guide to identifying, nurturing and growing our insight and creativity for more effective thinking. We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a very brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also tantalisingly unpredictable, spending worryingly large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimise these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfil our potential – and achieve the contentment we deserve. We learn – among other things – how to grasp fragile and flighty thoughts before they disappear through anxiety and fear, at what times of day to try to work and for how long, how to make use of our boredom and instincts – and how to overcome timid and predictable approaches to the largest problems.

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The difference between success and failure often hangs on a fascinatingly small and elusive concept that our standard education system never touches: confidence. This is a guidebook to what confidence consists of, why we lack it - and how we can acquire more of it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently and wryly around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential. We hear about the impostor syndrome, the wisdom of imagining the great in their bathrooms and what Nietzsche and Montaigne (among others) have to tell us about resilience and courage. We often stay stuck with the level of confidence we have because we implicitly regard being confident as a matter of slightly freakish and unrepeatable good luck. In fact, as this essay charmingly shows, the opposite is true. Confidence is a skill based on a set of ideas about our place in the world - and its secrets can quietly and deftly be learnt. What people are saying about On Confidence: “Awesome graphic design and the paper quality is amazing.” Joana “Great content, engagingly written.” Janine “Great life advice without being overly pedantic. Cleverly written, digestible format.” Carolyn

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A beautifully photographic therapeutic novel which teaches us about our own emotions through a young woman’s journey of self-discovery. This is a novel with a striking mission at its heart: not just to tell us a story but to show us – through the example of one life – how we might change our own. The novel introduces us to Anna, a kind, inspiring, thoughtful but modest and self-questioning person, in whom we might catch echoes of ourselves. Life has been hard of late for Anna: her job is putting her under extreme pressure, her relationship is lacking the support she craves, her parents have saddled her with a complicated emotional history. And yet she is determined to progress and liberate herself from her inhibitions. In a style that’s brief and poignant, accompanied by lyrical and thought-provoking images, we follow Anna as she slowly unpicks the roots of her self-suspicion and discovers something we all deserve but have so often been denied: a voice of our own.

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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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Children are, in many ways, born philosophers. Without prompting, they ask some of the largest questions about time, mortality, happiness and the meaning of it all. Yet too often this inborn curiosity is not developed and, with age, the questions fall away. This is a book designed to harness children's spontaneous philosophical instinct and to develop it through introductions to some of the most vibrant and essential philosophical ideas of history. The book takes us to meet leading figures of philosophy from around the world and from all eras - and shows us how their ideas continue to matter. The book functions as an ideal introduction to philosophy, as well as a charming way to open up conversations between adults and children about the biggest questions we all face. What people are saying about Big Ideas for Curious Minds: “This is an absolute must have for ALL children. It is absolutely fantastic and helps children understand a number of their daily struggles. In fact I take that previous comment back, this is an absolute must for EVERYONE. I have had read it from cover to cover, and as a 40 year old woman I have honestly learnt something new.” Freddies Mummy UK “This is a beautifully produced book published by the School of Life (founded by well known philosopher Alain de Botton). It is a very accessible starting point for exploring philosophy and how philosophical ideas can be applied to everyday life, in fact it is very explicit about this.” Ewingel “I can't stop reading and talking about this book with others. It is easy to follow and great for an introduction to philosophy for kids. Well written, great illustrations, ideas and clever how it relates the philosophers' ideas to the lives and issues that children have. 5 stars!” Thomas Leesa “The book itself is genius with an introduction to leading figures of philosophy from around the world from all eras. Alongside that there are chapters teaching our children crucial lessons about life, about love, and about loss. Topics such as ‘Why you feel lonely’, ‘Politeness matters’, ‘People are unhappy not mean’, and ‘The mind-body problem’ offer invaluable insights into philosophy in a way that our children can really get on board with. When the book arrived and I had a quick glance through it, my immediate reaction was that it was far too old for my children. And yet when I took the time to start reading, and to admire the beautiful illustrations, I found myself still sat there, an hour later, realising that this was exactly the kind of book I want each of my children to read as they grow.” Five Little Doves “The focus of these chapters are incredibly meaningful, some of my favourites include ‘People are unhappy, not mean’, ‘Learn to say what’s on your mind’, ‘Good things are (unexpectedly) hard’ and ‘Politeness matters’. The book has been written by the fantastic School of Life and it is suggested for curious minds aged 9+. I think most adults would also find these ideas incredibly helpful to reflect on; who doesn’t need reminding that when someone is angry, maybe it’s not you who is responsible?” Louise Treherne, Role Models “Although Big Ideas for Curious Minds is aimed at children I have got a lot from it too – and I wish I had read it myself as a child… This book has taught me, and LP, new ways of thinking and new ways of being.” What the Redhead Said

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Psychotherapy is one of the most valuable inventions of the last hundred years, with an exceptional power to raise our levels of emotional well-being, improve our relationships, redeem the atmosphere in our families and assist us in mining our professional potential. But it is also profoundly misunderstood and the subject of a host of unhelpful fantasies, hopes and suspicions. Its logic is rarely explained and its voice seldom heard with sufficient directness. This is a book that attempts to explain psychotherapy: what the needs are in all of us to which it caters; the methods by which it addresses these needs - and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention could ideally be. The book reflects a fundamental belief of the School of Life that psychotherapy is the single greatest step any of us can take towards self-understanding and fulfilment. A course of therapy stands to render us ever so slightly less angry, self-defeating, unconfident, lost and sad. This is a guide to the purpose and meaning of psychotherapy. What people are saying about What is Psychotherapy?: “Love the book, high quality product. I am very pleased with my purchase. It is a small book but big enough to answer the question from the headline.” Srecka “Great read and being a hardback gives the book a special feel, a kind if little treasure.” Brian “A lovely little book to help make psychotherapy more accessible.” “Great book for that first understanding of psychotherapy, easy and quick to read.” “This book is invaluable and makes so much sense. I will be ordering more copies to give to friends.” “Inspiring and impressive. Bringing easy terms and daily encounters into deeper understanding.”

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We still pay homage to one of the most relevant philosophies ever devised when we call someone ‘stoic’ for the way they handle the challenges in their lives with resilience and calm. Originating in Greece around 300 BCE, Stoicism was for many centuries the most popular philosophy in the Western world, teaching people practical advice on how they could flourish in uncertain times and overcome their anxieties. This box of cards gathers together the best insights and sayings from the great Stoic thinkers and marries them up with commentaries that bring out their applicability to our own lives. This is both an elegant summary of an ancient philosophy and a route to self-knowledge, serenity and strength of mind.

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Almost no one gets through life without, at some point, having their heart broken. Advice at such a dark moment tends to focus on letting time do the healing. But there is also a vital role for understanding and perspective. We sometimes make our situation far worse than it needs to be through certain ideas we develop about why we’ve been left. We start to tell ourselves that we are not good enough, that we fail at everything, that this one rejection means we will always be maltreated… Our thoughts make our sorrow a great deal more intense than it could be. This is a book to help us over heartbreak by offering us some context, some history, some psychology and a little philosophy. We learn about how our responses to abandonment are formed, what the best way to think about an ex might be and how to envisage future relationships when we are in despair. We come away gently cheered that we are not alone, consoled that our suffering will have an end - and intrigued by the endless and subtle sorrows and joys of relationships.

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Many of us are quiet geniuses at the art of procrastination. We tend to feel so guilty about everything we haven’t done yet (and the hours frittered away as though we were immortal), we never get around to reflecting on why we delay and how we might do so less often. It seems as if we have procrastinated too much to deserve a new start. Far from it. As this book shows, procrastination isn’t a weird affliction we alone have been cursed with: it’s a fascinating and solvable design-flaw of the human animal. The goal is not to remove procrastination altogether (it sometimes has things to teach us), but to understand its roots and plot a nimble path around it. This is a book about managing our procrastination, getting the most out of our afternoons on the sofa and then sometimes daring to get on with the most important tasks in our lives.

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A collection of humanity’s most inspiring ideas throughout time, bringing perspective to the challenges and wonders of being alive. This is an unusual sort of history book: a history of ideas – and not just any old ideas, ideas from across time and space that are best suited to healing, enchanting and reviving us. Along the way, we travel around the world, from the very beginnings of our species right up to the modern age. We hear about the Ancient Greeks and Romans, we learn about Buddhism and Islam, we acquire ideas from Hinduism and the European Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Modernity. Deliberately eclectic, the book gives us a panoramic, 3,000-year view over the finest insights of a diversity of civilisations. Every idea hangs off an image – it could be a place, a document, a building or a work of art – that has something very specific to teach us. There are ideas here that will stick in our minds because they can help to answer the biggest puzzles we may have: about the direction of our lives, the issues of relationships, the meaning of existence. The book amounts to a feast for the intellect and the imagination – to make us into the best sorts of historians, those who know how to use the past to shed light on their own lives.

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The world is full of places that inspire and bring us joy: they might be exceptionally beautiful, resonant with history, untouched by civilisation or rich in memory. This is an atlas that gathers together some of the most enchanting and reinvigorating places around the world in order to heal and captivate, including beautiful destinations in Greece, Italy, Japan, America, Chile and Australia, to name but a few. We’re taken to the tops of mountains, solitary cliffs, elegant cities and also some less expected locations: airports, hydroelectric stations and meteorite craters. Great travellers have always known that travelling can broaden the mind; here we see how it can also heal it. A Therapeutic Atlas reminds us that the world is far broader and more inspiring than we tend to appreciate day to day. Tempting images are combined with short essays that discuss the power of particular places to help us with the difficulties of being human. We locate places that are therapeutic because they coax us out of familiar patterns of thought and liberate our minds. This is a book that can be read when travelling, as a real-life atlas, but as importantly, when travel is difficult, it reminds us that there is no place like home and the sanctuary of our own bed.

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Most of us long to be a little calmer: too many of our days are lost to agitation and worry, stress and discord. Yet we know that we are at our best when we can manage not to panic and take challenges in our stride. Fortunately, a calm state of mind is not a divine gift. Even those of us starting from a more agitated position can systematically understand and lay claim to it. Too many books on this subject simply explain what it would be like to be calm. This is a workbook that takes us through the practical steps required to actually become calm. It is filled with exercises and prompts that deliver the self-understanding and self-compassion on which true serenity depends. Furthermore, the book invites us to build calming routines into our daily lives so that what we learn can stick with us and change us for the long term. Based on years of The School of Life’s work in the area of anxiety and calm, this is a landmark workbook guaranteed to bring about the calmer state of mind we long for and deserve.

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In life, we are regularly faced with dilemmas: complex everyday problems for which there are no obvious answers. When a friend confesses to having an affair, do we keep their secret’? When a colleague has terrible breath, do we let them know’? When a stranger is crying on the bus, do we offer comfort or keep our distance’? In such moments, we long for some good advice to help us find a way forward. The Dilemmas Game invites you to flex your moral muscles and compare your problem-solving skills with those of your friends and family. Players must propose different solutions to 52 common dilemmas, using analogies or drawing on real-life experiences to explain their answers. It’s a fun and enlightening way of practising for the inevitable quandaries of life.

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A meal with friends is only ever as good as the questions we ask one another. Too often, we fall back on polite but not so inspired staples: ‘Have you got anything special planned for the weekend?’ ‘What do you do?’, and so on. But there are better kinds of questions - questions that work like magic keys that open up our hearts, draw out our memories and prompt our latent reserves of generosity, fun and interest. This pack collects 80 of these sorts of questions to ensure a meal together can be at once meaningful, entertaining and touching. Laid out on placecards, the questions gently and charmingly pull our fellow diners towards the sort of topics that matter most to our deeper selves - and help us get the most out of one another... Questions Include: What do other people not understand about you? What do you worry about in the middle of the night? Which three adjectives capture important things about you? When you feel upset, how - ideally - would you like to be comforted?

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In order to work well together, people need more than just technical skills; they need to get to know and understand each other. We suspect this intuitively; which is why fortunes are spent on team-building exercises. But because costly excursions aren’t always possible, we’ve designed a game that requires nothing more than a room and a little free time. Teamwork contains 100 questions that playfully and sensitively introduce us to our colleagues by setting up the best kinds of conversation about everything from our childhoods to our values. Played as a group, we’ll end up in profound, eye-opening and meaningful chats that humanise colleagues in each other’s eyes and help to create an atmosphere of forgiving and kind collegiality around the office: this is the best and easiest way to turn individuals into a team. Topics covered include: Flaws, Fears & Regrets Character Work Likes & Interests The Past

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It’s hard to understand who we really are: what we want, how we feel and why we react as we do. This lack of self-knowledge can be trouble, for it makes us get into the wrong relationships, pick unsatisfactory jobs or spend money unwisely. No wonder Socrates summed up all the counsel of philosophy in just two words: ‘Know Yourself’. These cards are designed to assist us in a journey of self-knowledge; they present us with a range of ideas and questions that can help us to understand ourselves better. Each card carries an exercise on one side and a piece of analysis on the reverse to help you gain insight and clarity on that ever elusive subject: yourself. Example Questions: Who are you? What happened to you in childhood? What is the meaning of life?

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There are about 130 million books in the world – and they are being added to at a rate of 4 million a year or so. Which ones, therefore, should we really read? What are the books that count? Which ones are going to make a real difference to us in the limited time we have? This is The School of Life's answer: a definitive list of the 100 books that we feel should truly matter to anyone who cares about their development and growth, a 100 books that are guaranteed to inspire, console and uplift us. We find books from all over the world, some very well known, others fascinatingly unfamiliar, united by a common ability to help us grow into the best versions of ourselves and to combat anxiety, despair and loneliness. This book answers one of the great questions we all face: how to assemble the perfect set of books with which we can acquire self-understanding, calm and emotional maturity; how to build ourselves a true library for happiness.

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This is a pack of cards to foster connection and closeness, which can (strangely but truly) be generated almost on command by the right sort of conversations. Here are 100 questions that help couples to rekindle affection. They lead naturally to chats about what we are ready to forgive, what we deeply appreciate, what remains exciting and what is especially worth cherishing. This is a deceptively simple game with life-changing consequences. Questions cover topics such as: What I really admire about you is… When appreciative friends discuss us, what do you think they might celebrate in us? How would you like to come back together again at the end of every day? If you never improved one bit, I’d still... The trick to understanding why I can sometimes be difficult is to remember that... Contains adult content.

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A glass 15 minute timer.

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Most questionnaires are just a bit of fun, but this one sets out to be both entertaining and useful. It offers us nothing less than a guide to the comforting and supportive relationships we long for. With online apps taking over the dating game, it has never been more crucial to know the rules. Through a series of pertinent questions, it reveals our distinctive style of loving, what our strengths and weaknesses are with partners, and how we might secure genuine fulfilment. As we work through the questionnaire and its accompanying essays, we discover the many reasons why relationships go wrong, and how they might do so less often in the future. The book considers the role of self-hatred, the influence of childhood, the importance of vulnerability, the appeal of unavailable people, and the best ways to overcome patterns of self-doubt and unhealthy attachment. Our minds are such confusing places, even the most thoughtful among us can fail to know central things about how we behave in relationships. This questionnaire will help us to understand ourselves more clearly and so set us free to discover the love we deserve.

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Emotions are like animals: No two are quite the same. Some are quiet; some are fierce; And all are hard to tame. An Emotional Menagerie is an emotional glossary for children. A book of 26 rhyming poems, arranged alphabetically, that bring our feelings to life – Anger, Boredom, Curiosity, Dreaminess, Embarrassment, Fear, Guilt, and more. The poems transform each emotion into a different animal to provide a clear and engaging illustration of its character: how it arises; how it makes us behave and how we can learn to manage its effects. Boasting a rich vocabulary, the poems also give children a wide variety of options for describing their feelings to others. Children experience all sorts of emotions: sometimes going through several very different ones before breakfast. Yet they can struggle to put these feelings into words. An inability to understand and communicate their moods can lead to bad behaviour, deep frustration and a whole host of difficulties further down the line. Like adults, they need help to recognise and verbalise their inner state. The greater their emotional vocabulary, the more likely they are to grow into happy, healthy and fulfilled adults. Filled with wise, therapeutic advice, brought to life through musical language and beautiful illustrations, An Emotional Menagerie is an imaginative and universally appealing way of increasing emotional literacy.

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