The School of Life – förlag

A guide to our anxious minds, offering a pathway to calm, self-compassion, and mental well-being.We all experience anxiety, but too often we bottle up our anxiousness, ashamed of what others might say, and end up feeling isolated and afraid. But anxiety is normal and deeply human. This book explains why we feel it, how we experience it, and what we can do about it.With their trademark combination of practicality, philosophy, and wit, The School of Life examines anxiety from a number of angles, providing a clear path forward to a calmer, kinder, compassionate, and more light-hearted future.

A compassionate guide to raising resilient, authentic, well-rounded children.

The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of life lessons, including how to say ''No'', how to look beneath the surface of "bad" behavior to find the root of what is going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, and how to handle the moodiness of adolescence. 

Rather than striving for perfection, the book argues, the job of any parent is in fact to guide a child gently into the imperfect nature of everything. 

Encouraging, wry, and steeped in years of experience, The Good Enough Parent is an intelligent guide to raising a child who will one day look back on their childhood with just the right mixture of gratitude, humor, and love.

A guide to the art of failing well—with actionable tips and a gentle approach

This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing – in small and usually also in large ways. Sometimes our failures are very obvious, at other times, we feel we have to conceal them out of shame. This book encourages us to accept the role that failure plays for all of us and to feel compassion for ourselves for the messes we can’t help but make as we go through our lives.

Full of actionable tips on how to approach life''s inevitable failures from small to large, this is the perfect volume for anyone who has ever gone through a breakup, suffered a career crisis, made enemies, fumbled a project, or wasted their time. (In other words: everyone.)

There is nothing more human than failing—and nothing wiser and more necessary failing well.

Focusing on important ideas from Western and Eastern philosophy, sociology, psychotherapy, art, architecture, and literature, this collection of wisdom and insight includes everyone from well know thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Lao Tzu to more unexpected names like Coco Chanel and St Benedict. 

With original color illustrations for each featured thinker, this book presents a fascinating gallery of individuals from across the millennia who have shaped the intellectual project of The School of Life.

Since around 1750, we have been living in the era of Romanticism, which has shaped the way we approach love, marriage, and sex. When it comes to love, this book argues, Romanticism has been a disaster. 

Full of real-life examples, lively humor, and cultural anecdotes, Relationships teaches us: 

With wisdom, wit, and compassion, this innovative guide paves the way to a new, brighter future for love.

It may seem useless, silly, or overwhelming to ponder the meaning of life. In truth, it is essential to ask ourselves this question in order to define and work towards a more meaningful existence. 

This book presents a range of areas in which we can seek the meaning of life, including love, family, friendship, work, self-knowledge and nature. We discover why some things feel meaningful and others don''t, and learn how to introduce more meaning into our daily lives.

As we try to navigate the complexities and anxieties of adulthood, considering our childhoods can feel like a daunting task. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we used to be. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we struggle as adults is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves as children. 

Whether our parents or caregivers were strict disciplinarians, overly fragile, or distant and preoccupied, the way we were taught to act as children deeply influences how we behave as adults. We might have assumed the role of caregiver, become people pleasers, or learned to tell lies to protect ourselves, burying our true needs and desires deep underground. 

When we thoroughly examine our upbringings, the larger implications for our adult selves become clear. Once we understand the roots from which our flaws stem, we can begin to correct the harmful behaviors we mistakenly believe to be innate. 

This book is a guide to better understanding our younger selves in order to shape who we wish to be today. It explores to what extent we can pin our actions in the present to our experiences in the past, and how we can break free from the learned patterns of our childhoods.

An essential guide to modern etiquette.Life is full of awkward social situations; we forget someone''s name while making introductions, we''re stuck on the elevator with our boss, we run into our ex on a first date. While these dilemmas might feel trivial, they tap into some of the deepest themes of our social existence: how to pursue our own agenda while honoring the happiness and needs of others? How to go beyond the surface level when relating to another person?Featuring twenty case studies from our modern world, this book puts good manners back at the center of our lives. Far from being old fashioned or stuffy, The School of Life argues, etiquette provides a framework through which to create a kinder and more considerate world.

A guidebook to the joys and anxieties of romantic love - and the key to finding a long term partner. 

This little book teaches us about the history of dating, the best way to discuss our past on our date, what questions to ask a new partner, and how to learn from a bad date. Both heartfelt and perceptive, it provides us with an indispensable road map to the varied, sometimes delightful, sometimes daunting realties of dating. 

Dating might seem like a trivial and relatively inconsequential part of love, but it is in fact the key to finding a lasting relationship. Dating allows us to explore some of the biggest themes of romantic love; how to know if someone is right for us; how soon to settle and how long to search; how to be at once honest and seductive; how to say "no" if a situation doesn''t feel right. The tone and practical advice in this little book never minimizes the agony, joys, and confusions of our dating days and nights but offers solace to the weary: there is a partner out there for all who seek. 

A practical, philosophical guide to understanding and overcoming heartbreak. 

Everyone experiences heartbreak at some point in their life. Advice can be heard to receive with a broken heart, and it tends to focus on letting time do the healing. This consoling and encouraging guide from The School of Life presents a refreshing perspective on heartbreak, arguing that a more nuanced understanding of our pain can help us along the path to healing. 

Through history, psychology, and a little philosophy, Heartbreak teaches us how our responses to abandonment are formed, what the best way to think about an ex might be, and how to envision future relationships when we are in the midst of despair. We come away feeling less alone, consoled that our suffering will have an end, and intrigued by the endless subtleties of relationships.

Part of The School of Life''s Love series, Affairs delves into the question of affairs and why they happen so oftenOne in four people will be involved in an affair during their lifetime. Rather than condemning affairs as morally corrupt, this book helps us understand them.Society tells us that affairs are unequivocally bad. Our culture casts those who engage in them as monsters, and their victims as deserving of unending sympathy. But most of us will be involved in an affair during our lifetimes. This book ventures beyond the cultural caricatures and provides psychological context for this entirely common occurrence. This book seeks to help us through affairs, offering couples a better understanding of each other''s motivations and moods-and the practical tools needed to save a relationship.

The definitive guide to arguments-and how to argue, betterSex, money, in-laws, finances, the laundry on the floor…Every couple argues. In fact, arguments-whether trivial or significant-are woven into the very fabric of romantic relationships. Most arguments stem from the disconnect between the message we want to send ("I need you to love me, know me, agree with me") and the manner in which we deliver it (with accusations, sulking, put-downs, sarcasm, even exaggerated gesticulations and forceful F-yous!),A bad argument is nothing more than a failed attempt to communicate. By taking a close look at the most common arguments, The School of Life experts offer practical ideas on how to avoid conflict and improve communication between partners. This book teaches us why arguments happen, what their symptoms are, and how to resolve them effectively.

A thought-provoking book that helps us adapt the best parts of religion to fit our modern day lives.

Whether or not we believe in religion, many of us feel drawn toward a spiritual life. Maybe we love cathedral architecture, Mozart''s Requiem, or Buddhist literature.

The School of Life is a secular organization fascinated by the gaps left in modern society by the gradual disappearance of religion. They''re interested in how hard it is to find a sense of community, why rituals are dying out, and when we crave the solemn quiet only found in religious buildings. This book lays out how we might absorb the best lessons of religion, update them for our times and incorporate them into our daily lives and societies-without taking on the theological or doctrinal elements.

A SECULAR GUIDE TO FINDING SPIRITUALITY

EXPLORES HOW ART, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY fill the void of religion in modern life.

PART OF A SERIES OF GIFTABLE ESSAYS FROM THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. Others include: What is Psychotherapy?, How to Find Love, and Self-Knowledge

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. But they are also unpredictable. Our thoughts tend to wander and our minds are either distracted or idle. This book teaches us how to optimize these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfill our potential.We learn how to hold on to fleeting thoughts before they disappear through anxiety and fear, what time of day is best for constructive work, and how to avoid predictable approaches to our largest problems. The result is a user''s manual to that most wondrous, intermittent, and always baffling, organ: the human mind.

An essential guide to navigating the complexities of professional relationships. 

Often, the most difficult aspect of work has nothing to do with deadlines, promotions, or competition. It has to do with the immense and beautiful challenges of dealing, on a daily basis, with our colleagues.

The people we work with can encourage, support, and energize us, However, working successfully around others, whether virtually or in person, is neither intuitive nor simple. It requires us to communicate effectively, to understand our own blind spots and biases, and to empathize with another person''s perspective. 

The School of Life has been working with organizations since its foundation, equipping employees with the emotional intelligence required to succeed. This book collects their learning into a series of lessons on workplace psychology. The result is an essential guide to harmonious, happier, and more profitable organizations.

An essential guide to emotional wellbeing for children, tackling everyday issues to facilitate happier, healthier lives.Designed to help children become more aware of their emotional needs, Happy, Healthy Minds covers everything from parents and friends to school and overwhelming feelings of self-consciousness. With engaging, interactive prompts, it encourages children to open up, explore their own feelings, and face the dilemmas of growing up.By mapping out emotions and moods children might have felt but not understood, this book provides them with the ultimate toolkit for happier, healthier, and more emotionally intelligent lives. And it speaks directly TO the child, in topics like: when parents don''t seem to understand us; when school feels boring (or difficult); what to do when we''re having trouble making friends; and much more.

Children are often told that art matters—but the truth is that very often it’s hard to know why it really does. Museum visits can feel like a chore as does having to learn the names of the big artists we’re all meant to love (but perhaps don’t quite in the way we’re supposed to). This is a huge pity because—grasped the right way—art has a deep capacity to improve our lives and offer us a sense of joy and mental well-being.

Here is a guide to art for children with a difference: in a tone that’s kindly, informative, unstuffy, and at times rightly irreverent, this book explains how art can fit into our lives. We learn where the impulse to make art comes from, what art to look at in certain moods, how to go around a museum without getting bored, and why—without even realizing it—we all become experts in art by decorating our first bedrooms.

This is an innovative guide to the importance of art, written in a way that will enchant children and, along the way, teach their favorite adults one or two vital things as well.

Children are rarely introduced properly to architecture, but there are in fact few subjects more important—because the quality of the architecture that surrounds us has such an impact on our mood and sense of well-being.

The bitter truth is that in modern times we’ve built a world that’s far too often ugly or charmless—and we’ve done so because very few people ever feel they have the right to comment on what gets built around them. This is a chance for the next generation to develop the tools to talk about architecture with confidence, knowledge, and passion. It tells us about what a satisfying building is, what makes a street enticing (or not), why some cities are charming and others repel us—and how we might build going forward in a way that will reliably delight and uplift us.

This engaging guide is designed to help children (and their favorite adults) to understand how buildings work and how we might create the better looking world we all crave and deserve.

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 behavior, deep frustration, and a whole host of difficulties further down the line. Like adults, they need help to recognize and verbalize their inner state. The greater their emotional vocabulary, the more likely they are to grow into happy, healthy, and fulfilled adults.

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.

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.

Full of colorful original photographs, The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting promises us a gentle way of staying calm around one of the most arduous yet deeply fulfilling jobs in the world. 

This playful adult board book distills 2,000 years of philosophy into 26 consoling mini essays that shed light on trials and pleasures of parenting. 

It’s impossible for a child to spend too long around adults without one of them coming up and asking, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" They mean for this to be a relatively simple question; the idea is that you’ll quite easily be able to say something like, "A teacher" or "A doctor" and then the adult will move on—and bother someone else.

But the truth can be a lot more complicated, and if you’ve ever felt confused or annoyed by the question, you have every right: Knowing what you might want to do with your working life is one of the biggest, oddest, and hardest questions of all. It might take many decades to find a good answer to it—and it’s one that most adults are still grappling with…

This is a unique book about careers and the world of work written expressly for children. It takes us on a journey around some of the most essential questions within the topic: How can one discover one’s passions?, what should a "good" job involve?, what is a good amount of money to try to make?, how does the economy function?—and acknowledges that the job you might do one day probably doesn’t even exist now. The result is a book that should spark some exceptionally fruitful conversations and help children look to their future work life with positivity and anticipation.