The School of Life

Whether we should stay in or leave a relationship is one of the most consequential and painful decisions we are ever likely to confront. 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...

One of the things we all deeply crave, and all richly deserve, is a more exciting life. We know well enough that many things have to be routine, hard and a little bit boring. But we also rightly sense that, if only we can find a way, our lives could be rendered intermittently more joyful, intense, thrilling and beautiful. A...

What is 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, and assist us in mining our professional potential. But it is also profoundly misunderstood. Its logic is rarely explained and its voice seldom heard with sufficient directness. This book attempts to...

Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We don't expect bliss every day. The fault isn't entirely our own; it has to do with the devilish truth that anyone we're liable to meet is going to be rather wrong, in some fascinating way or another, because this is simply what all humans happen...

The School of Life: Collected Essays is an essential compilation from an organisation dedicated to fostering calm, self-understanding, and greater emotional maturity. With over 15 years of influential work, these landmark essays are gathered together for the first time. Among these insightful essays, you will discover: On Confidence: A guide to overcoming inhibition and shame, paving the way for a...

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. Who Am I? is designed...

Raising a child to be an authentic and mentally robust adult is one of life's great challenges. It is also, fortunately, not a matter of luck. There are many things to understand about how children's minds operate and what they need from those who look after them so they can develop into the best version of themselves. The Good Enough...

THE GREAT THINKERS is a collection of some of the most important ideas of Eastern and Western culture, drawn from the works of those philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, artists, and novelists whom we believe have the most to offer to us today. The School of Life has made the thinkers in this book clear, relevant, and charming, mining the history...

Work can be a route to creativity, excitement and purpose. Nevertheless, many of us end up confused, discouraged and beaten by our working lives. The temptation is often to blame ourselves, and to feel privately ashamed and guilty. However, as this book lucidly explains, there is a range of well-embedded and intriguing reasons why work proves demoralising, including the evolution...

The difference between success and failure often hangs on a concept that our standard education system never touches: confidence. On Confidence walks us 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...

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...

We don't think we hate cheap things, of course, but we often behave as if we do. We rarely properly appreciate what is around us and doesn't appear to cost very much – for example, the night sky, pencils, fried eggs, zips, and the holding of hands. This essay explores the way we can grow disenchanted with our immediate circumstances...

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....