The School of Life

Our new book, A Therapeutic Journey, is a collection of the very best ideas from this channel. This talk was hosted by How To Academy London’s home of big thinking. Find out more about their live programme of talks, conversations and debates with leading authors, artists, scientists and scholars at http:www.howtoacademy.com, and follow their biweekly podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/6SZsa Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/R8TNc The School of Life runs a global online psychotherapy service that assists clients from over 40 countries. To find out more and book a session today, please visit our website: https://t.ly/xP3EL SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-school-of-life-for-business/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There remain few expressions better able to capture the futility of a task than one which compares our efforts to ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.’ However, once we get to know them, we might come to think that they are what we should have been focused on all along.Uploaded 24-11-21Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/Dv6VEBe more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/PBnbWFURTHER READINGYou can read more on this and other subjects here: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/you-still-have-time/“There remain few expressions better able to capture the futility of a task than one which compares our efforts to ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.’ The hull has been breached, the ship is sinking; to concern ourselves, at such a moment, with the position of the loungers would be the ultimate folly, the deepest possible failure to recognise the true hopelessness of the situation. The point seems grimly apt because we are, many of us, a little like the passengers on a stricken liner. Our larger hopes in life have been fatally holed: we see now that our career won’t ever particularly flourish; our relationships will always be compromised; we’ve passed our peak in terms of looks; our bodies are going to fall prey to ever more humiliating illnesses; society isn’t going to cure itself; significant political progress looks deeply improbable. Our ship is going down. It can feel as if trying to improve our condition, let alone find pleasure and distraction would be an insult to the facts. Our instinct is to be as funereal and gloomy as our ultimate end…”MORE SCHOOL OF LIFEWatch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLselfSOCIAL MEDIAFeel free to follow us at the links below:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITSProduced in collaboration with:Gemma Green-Hopehttps://www.instagram.com/gemmagreenhope/?hl=en Title animation produced in collaboration withVale Productionshttps://www.valeproductions.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Flirting is an art that deserves to be far more widely known and far more often practiced. Here is a short guide. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/e8YIW Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/7ljOz FURTHER READING Flirting has a bad name. Too often, it seems a supreme form of duplicity, a sly attempt to excite another person and derive gratification from their interest without any corresponding wish to go to bed with them. It looks like a manipulative promise of sexual affection that, at the last moment, leaves its targets confused and humiliated. In our sadness, back home alone after the nightclub or the party, we may rail against the flirt for ‘only’ flirting, when it had appeared there would be so much more. But this kind of pattern represents only one, unedifying and regrettable possibility around flirting. At its best, flirting can be a vital social process that generously lends us reassurance and freely redistributes confidence and self-esteem. The task is not to stop flirting, but to learn how better to practice its most honourable versions. MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLrelationships SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Nina Cosford http://www.ninacosford.com/ Animation by Ali Graham http://www.grarg.com #TheSchoolOfLife ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one wants to fall mentally ill. Yet, paradoxically, our insistence on always maintaining perfect mental health may make us more susceptible to becoming unwell.Uploaded 15-09-21Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/QgGTHBe more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/huIt_The School of Life runs a global online psychotherapy service that assists clients from over 40 countries. To find out more and book a session today, please visit our website: https://t.ly/xP3ELFURTHER READINGYou can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/3kbGAbV“One of the great contributing factors to mental illness is the idea that we should at all costs and and all times be well. We suffer far more than we should because of how long it can take many of us until we allow ourselves to fall properly and usefully ill. For many years we may be able skilfully to evade our symptoms, pulling off an an accomplished impression of what counts – in our unobservant societies – as a healthy human. We may gain all the accoutrements of so-called success – love, a career, family, prestige – without anyone bothering to note the sickness behind our eyes. We may take care to fill our days with activity so that we can be guaranteed to have no time to address any of the sores that blister inside. We can rely on the extraordinary prestige of being busy to avoid the truly hard work of doing nothing – other than sit with our minds and their complicated sorrows. When pressures build, we may develop a raft of opaque physical ailments that baffle and excite the medical profession or we can acquire a paranoid world-view that identifies all our enemies with political and economic ideologies – rather than with anything psychological closer to home…”MORE SCHOOL OF LIFEWatch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLselfSOCIAL MEDIAFeel free to follow us at the links below:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITSProduced in collaboration with:Eunju Ara Choihttps://vimeo.com/arachoi Title animation produced in collaboration withVale Productionshttps://www.valeproductions.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one is ever boring: we just seem boring when we haven’t learnt the surprisingly easy art of being honest about our vulnerabilities. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/geNqK Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/ZPE8M FURTHER READING “One of our great fears – which haunts us when we go into the world and socialise with others – is that we may, in our hearts, be really rather boring. But the good news, and a fundamental truth too, is that no one is ever truly boring. They are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don’t dare (or know how) to communicate them to others…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Ana Stefaniak http://www.anastefaniak.co.uk/ #TheSchoolOfLife ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices