The School of Life

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. The School of Life: Relationships starts from a different premise: that love is a skill to be learnt,...

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...

So often we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures, while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which, if only we paid more attention, could bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. Small Pleasures is a book to guide us to the best of life's small pleasures: the distinctive...

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. How to Think More Effectively is a book about how to optimise these beautiful yet fitful instruments so...

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...

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 sadly, too often, this inborn curiosity is not developed, and with age, the questions fall away. Big Ideas for Curious Minds is a book designed to harness children's spontaneous philosophical instinct and to...

The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn't just a case of emptying out...

Nowadays, almost all of us wish we could be calmer; it is one of the distinctive longings of the modern age. Across history, people have sought adventure and excitement, however, a new priority for many of us is a desire to be more tranquil. This is a book designed to support us in our endeavours to remain calm against all...

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...

Essential Ideas 1: Love by The School of Life has distilled its most essential ideas on love to produce a bitesize manual that is both useful and entertaining. We learn—among other things—how to pick partners more reliably, how to avoid conflict, and how to know whether a relationship is really for us. By exploring key themes within the topic of...

Essential Ideas 2: Self-Awareness by The School of Life distils the most essential ideas on self-awareness into a bitesize manual that is both useful and entertaining. Understanding ourselves is the key to unlocking our true potential. This collection encapsulates The School of Life’s most penetrating insights into the puzzles of self-awareness. By exploring key themes within the topic of self-knowledge,...

The Couple's Workbook reveals that love is a skill, not just an emotion, which we must practice to excel, just as in any area where we wish to shine. Our research has shown that almost a third of the British population (32%) expect their romantic relationships to resemble fairy tale romances. However, after an exhilarating and passion-filled start, many of...

A modern, emotionally intelligent guide to love — Explores why romantic relationships bring both profound joy and deep suffering and why this tension is unavoidable. Essay-led, accessible and highly giftable — Ideal for dipping into, reflecting, and returning to, perfect for readers seeking insight rather than instruction. Grounded in psychology, philosophy and culture — Blends therapeutic insight with timeless ideas...

Big Ideas from Art introduces art as something children can use, not just study. It shows how art connects to our feelings, helps us understand ourselves, and can bring comfort, excitement, and joy. Readers will learn how to look at art without feeling bored, what kinds of art might help in different moods, and why everyone becomes an art expert...

We often assume that maturity arrives automatically with age. Yet many of us enter adulthood without ever learning what emotional maturity actually involves — or how to develop it. The Ingredients of Emotional Maturity explores the core psychological qualities that define emotional adulthood: the ability to explain rather than merely react, to forgive without abandoning ourselves, to face conflict without...

It can sometimes seem a mystery why some couples stay together and thrive – while many more split up or drag on scratchily. Fortunately, though we might ascribe happy love to chance, there are a range of identifiable secrets that underpin all good relationships and that we can learn and put into practice. The Secrets of Successful Relationships teaches us...

Few things promise as much potential happiness as friendship, yet the challenge of finding and maintaining meaningful connections remains one of life's great struggles. Drawing on psychology, philosophy and cultural history, The Secrets of Successful Friendships offers a thoughtful exploration of why friendship is both more complex and more rewarding than we typically imagine. It examines why we get lonely,...

We accept without shame that most organs in our bodies might at some point develop problems and could need a bit of help. We should not make an exception of our minds. Our lives are so complicated and so filled with burdens, we should be completely unsurprised if, at some point, we felt a need to pull up a white...

What Are You Feeling? is the first in a series of books that aims to develop emotional literacy for children aged 5-8 years. It is a book about finding interesting words for interesting feelings. It explores what lots of feeling words really mean and which words best describe the many feelings a child may have. The book discusses 20 different...

The School of Life: On Failure is a hopeful, consoling, and 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...

Many of us are attracted to the idea of marriage and yet feel a bit uncomfortable with some of the rituals that are traditionally associated with the big day. Perhaps the old ceremonies place too much emphasis on religion or seem out of step with some of the complex realities of contemporary relationships. In response to this dilemma, The School...

To wonder too openly or intensely about the meaning of life can seem a peculiar, ill-fated and faintly ridiculous pastime. It can seem like a topic on which ordinary mortals cannot make much progress. In truth, it is for all of us to wonder about, define and work towards a more meaningful existence. The Meaning of Life considers a range...

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. It's a big ask and explains why so many people have an identity crisis in their work lives. A Job to Love...

This is a book that celebrates the most neglected but valuable emotion we can feel: melancholy. Melancholy isn't depression or anger or bitterness; it's a serene, accepting, gentle, wise and kindly response to the difficulties and occasional misery of being alive. It steers an ideal mid-way course between despair on the one hand and naive optimism on the other. But...

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...

The difference between a successful and a disappointing life often comes down to a critical ingredient that we overlook at our peril: confidence. The Confidence Workbook is a book with a practical purpose: to take us through exercises that help us rediscover the confidence we already have inside us — the confidence that we have neglected out of habit, fear...

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—and a lot of people might be invested in us continuing along the safe and predictable path. But in private, some of us are acutely aware that we aren't happy where we are...

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...

Stress and mental ill health currently cost 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...

Self-Reflection Journal is a journal designed to help us process our lives: to think more clearly about what we really want, what we are actually feeling, and what might be holding us back from our goals. We are given the space to observe what is going on in our minds and the encouragement to regularly analyse our thoughts with clarity...

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. Self-Knowledge takes us on a...

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. Reasons to be Hopeful is an eclectic collection of anecdotes and arguments, vibrantly illustrated with artworks and...

Most books that want to change us seek to make us richer or thinner. On Being Nice wants to help us to be nicer: that is, less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer, 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...

Behind many of our problems lies an often ignored factor: we don't like ourselves very much. We are sufferers of self-hatred. We tell ourselves the meanest things. It's because of self-hatred that we tend to neglect our potential at work and get entangled in unfulfilling relationships, that we lack confidence in our social lives and suffer from anxiety and despair....

Families are a mystery. Is everyone's as complicated as ours? Is there such a thing as a 'normal' one? We generally only get to see the polished exteriors and are left to imagine what might be going on behind closed doors. Here is a book that takes us on a tour around the reality of families. It provides a rare,...

It’s easy to feel that we are alone in feeling alone. Not only do we suffer, but we also destroy our self-confidence with repeated convictions that we are the only ones who are so confused and at sea, the only ones without a partner and who will be alone (again) on Saturday night. This transformative book examines loneliness through fifty...

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...

We may spend years mastering the external world – acquiring degrees, advancing careers, building families – without ever turning inwards to make sense of the person orchestrating it all: ourselves.This book is a guide to the elusive, essential task of self-knowledge. With clarity, gentleness and depth, it explores why we are often mysteries to ourselves, how our childhoods quietly script...

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...

Life constantly requires us to give other people some hugely awkward messages: that we don't love them anymore; that we do love them (though we're not meant to); that they smell a bit; that they're fired; that we're furious with them (though we adore them) or that their music is too loud... Often, out of embarrassment, we just stay quiet....

The most difficult aspect of work has nothing to do with profitability or deadlines or competition. It has to do with the immense and beautiful challenges opened up by the fact that we must deal, on an ongoing basis, with that often amazing but always complicated entity known as the colleague. Our colleagues can be the sources of our greatest...

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...

We spend our lives inside ourselves, and yet understanding our inner world remains one of our most complex challenges. This enlightening and practical book offers a collection of transformative psychological tests designed to illuminate the hidden dimensions of our psyches. Through a curated selection of 55 psychological exercises developed by various renowned psychologists and psychotherapists – from the revealing Word...

Choosing a partner is one of the most consequential and tricky decisions we will ever make, and the cost of repeated failure is immense. How to Find Love explains why we have the 'types' we do, and how our early experiences give us scripts of how and whom we love. It sheds light on harmful repetitive patterns and the extent...

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...

Our parents are a huge deal: whether we adore them or keep them at a distance, who we are today (what love stories we get into, our attitudes to work, our self-esteem) is crucially determined by our relationships with the vastly significant people who put us on the earth. Getting Over Your Parents is a practical guide on how to...

Most questionnaires are happy to be a bit of fun; this one sets out to be both entertaining and, more importantly, useful—offering us nothing less than a guide to the comforting and supportive relationships we long for. Through a series of pertinent questions, it reveals our distinctive style of loving, what our strengths and weaknesses are with partners, and how...

We are so used to living in a media-saturated world that we do not notice just how much damage is being done to us daily by the images we see and the articles and posts we read. If you are often anxious or find it hard to sleep, or you regularly want to give up on your fellow human beings,...

Most of us long to be more emotionally mature and better able to face life's challenges with poise, confidence, kindness, and good-natured intelligence. We want to be proper grown-ups. With gentleness and insight, How Emotionally Mature Are You? helps us zero in on the key markers of psychological adulthood. It prompts us to look at how we respond to rejection,...

All of us have—to a greater or lesser extent—suffered from traumas in our lives, often at a young age. The less we address these traumas, the more they have a habit of causing us difficulties in the form of broken relationships, nagging anxieties, depression, or physical symptoms like insomnia, digestive issues, or backache. From Trauma to Healing helps us understand...

One of the difficulties with 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...

Knowing how to be calm deserves to be counted as life's greatest skill, for even if we have every other possible advantage, so long as our mind is frantic, we will never taste the happiness we seek. This ingenious small book is nothing less than a comprehensive guide to the art of calm. It takes us systematically through the many...

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...

Science is all around us, helping to explain the ideas that matter in our life. By asking questions about how things work, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world and our place in it. Big Ideas from Science introduces children to some of the most influential scientists throughout history, and the amazing scientific breakthroughs that have changed the...

Books can be so powerful, helping us through tricky times, offering us wisdom we haven't learnt yet, showing us that there are people like us, or showing us the opposite, that other people live very different lives. Books can be a friend when you need one the most, and you can use them to help and inspire others too. Big...

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...

A Voice of One's Own 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...

Books, however familiar, are amongst the strangest objects on the planet: little portals that open directly into the ideas, feelings, loves and sorrows of writers from all times and places. There are many reasons to love reading. But boldly, we emphasise one: we read for emotional guidance and support. The right book can bring consolation or courage; it can locate...

A Voice of One's Own 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...

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. Art Against Despair is...

A History of Ideas 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. It's a collection of humanity's very best thoughts on how to approach the challenges and joys of being alive. Along the way,...

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...

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... Too often, we bottle up our...

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...

Children are used to hearing about how important it is to protect nature, but they may not fully understand how the natural world can positively impact their emotional wellbeing. With that in mind, Nature and Me looks to show children how nature can be fun, uplifting, consoling and even offer companionship. This is a book about how nature can touch...

Our minds are beautifully complicated and brilliant machines. For much of our lives, these machines run hugely efficiently with minimal maintenance. However, just like our other organs, they do require some proper attention and thought every now and then, and recognising this at an early age can only help as children progress into adulthood. We explore a range of common...

This journal invites us to regularly check in on ourselves—what we want, where we want to change, and where we need to go—in order to maximise our chances of leading a fulfilled and contented life. The journal helps us to carve out time to focus on someone it is too easy to neglect: ourselves. With the help of some well-focused...

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...

When Socrates, apparently the wisest man of antiquity, was asked to define our highest purpose as humans, he responded, 'To know ourselves.' The advice has never been bettered. Without self-knowledge, all other efforts will be in vain. Self-Knowledge in 40 Images is a book to help us on our journey to knowing ourselves better. Made up of 40 images drawn...

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 divine commandments or the existence of...

The modern world is richer, safer and more connected than ever before, but it is - arguably - also a far less loving world than we need or want: impatience, self-righteousness, moralism and viciousness are rife, while forgiveness, tolerance and sympathetic good humour can be in short supply. A More Loving World is a book that rallies us to remember...

It's important to think about what others might be feeling, so we can understand the people around us better and be a good friend. But sometimes it can be difficult to guess what someone else might be feeling, or their emotions may not be what we expect.What Are They Feeling? takes children on an exploration of the feelings of others....

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? What Is Culture For? proposes that works of culture were all made, in one way or another, with the idea of improving...

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...

The Sorrows of Love argues that love has, quite unfairly, come to be associated solely with happiness. However, it is also one of the most reliable routes to misery. We tend to treat our sadness individually, as if it were unique and shameful. But, as this book explains, there are solid reasons why love should be highly sorrowful at times....

Few of us are without some relationship to divorce: we may be the children, parents or grandparents of divorcees, the colleagues or friends; this may be what we went through a decade ago or what lies ahead of us for the 2030s or 40s; it might be what we are just concluding - at this very moment and in intense...

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...

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,...

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...

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...