Self-Help

An interactive guide to our complex and elusive inner selves.

One of the most difficult tasks we face as humans is figuring out who we are. "Describe yourself" can be a surprisingly difficult task. Sometimes, we need prompts and suggestions to engage and energize us.

With unusual, entertaining, and playful exercises, this journal is designed to help us tease out and organize who we are. With beautiful designs by Marcia Mihotich throughout and mini essays on topics like relationships and work, this book shows us how our complicated, beautiful, and sometimes painful experiences all contribute to the richness of who we are.

• UNCONVENTIONAL AND PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS to prompt honest self-reflection.
• AN INTERACTIVE JOURNAL OF SELF DISCOVERY with space for written answers.
• FULL COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT
• A COLLECTION OF MINI ESSAYS on topics like relationships, work, and culture.

Alain de Botton's redemptive volume charts a course from collapse to recovery with kindness, compassion and wisdom.

“Alain de Botton, one of our era’s most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives.” — The Marginalian

A Therapeutic Journey is a collection of essays about mental challenge and health. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is a practical guide to well-being and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments.

Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of forms of mental pain and illness, from the mild to the severe. It considers how and why we might become ill; how we can explain things to friends, family and colleagues; how we can find our ways towards recovery; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside our difficulties.

At heart this is a book about happiness - about regaining the thread of our lives, rediscovering meaning, and finding our way back to connection, warmth and joy.

This book explores ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less.

We live in a complicated, frenzied, and noisy world, filled with too much information, too many products, ideas, and opinions. As a result, many of us long for simplicity: a pared down, more peaceful, and less cluttered life. 

This book is a guide to the simpler lives we crave and deserve. In it, we learn about Zen Buddhism, modernist architecture, monasteries, psychoanalysis, and why three good friends and a few treasured belongings are enough. 

Taking a psychological approach, the book also guides us toward inner simplicity. For too long we've been drowning in excess, clutter, and confusion. A Simpler Life helps us tune out the static and focus on what really matters.

• DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE practical ways to get rid of physical and psychological clutter.
• HOW TO BE DIRECT advice on adopting a simpler, more straight-forward mindset.
• THE APPEAL OF MINIMALISM looks at why more of us are drawn to a pared down existence.
• HOW TO SIMPLIFY everything from relationships, social life, lifestyle, and work.

Therapeutic exercises to help couples nurture patience, forgiveness, and humor. 

Love is not just an emotion - it's a skill. And just like any other skill, we need to practice in order to get good at it. 

We often have fairy tale expectations for our romantic relationships, but realistically, after a heady and passion-fueled start, we end up in partnerships that are a confusing tangle of hope, distance, boredom, loyalty, and betrayal. 

Full of accessible and though-provoking exercises, this workbook fosters understanding, patience, forgiveness, humor, and resilience in the face of the many hurdles that invariably arise in a long term relationship. 

Couples are guided to have particular conversations, analyze 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 - and to have fun while doing it.

No one can be intuitively good at relationships. We all need to do some homework to become the best partners and couples we can be.

• A GUIDED JOURNAL WITH OVER 60 EXERCISES to encourage couples to share their feelings with each other and open up about their insecurities.
• A THERAPEUTIC WORKBOOK drawing from research from The School of Life’s therapy department.
• INCLUDES INTERACTIVE SPACES to complete the activities and illustrations throughout.
• BEAUTIFULLY PRODUCED hardcover in high end gift format.

An exploration of the many reasons to remain hopeful in the face of life's disappointments and challenges.

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.

Here is a collection of some of the most persuasive arguments for staying on the side of optimism, creativity, kindness, calm and hope. Across a series of essays, we learn why we still have the right to feel purposeful and buoyant despite everything that is challenging: because there is still so much more to discover, because love can triumph sometimes, because we can delight in summer days and the light of dawn, because we are not alone in our suffering, because we are never far from the option of a slice of cake or a bath, because we are very small things in a mighty and beautiful universe and because we don’t require perfection for things to feel good enough.

In a tone that avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality and cynicism, the book urges us to reconnect with our more resilient selves, bidding us to recover faith in what is still possible. At points funny and always encouraging and kind, here is an ideal friend to guide us back to courage and delight.

• A TOOL TO ASSIST US IN OUR SEARCH FOR A REASON TO BE: the book is an eclectic collection of short essays on wide-ranging subjects, from an extraordinary encounter between Mick Jagger and an unfamiliar Jesuit priest to the escapism found in Iranian cinema.
• HOPEFULNESS FOR PESSIMISTS: an honest and accessible guide to navigate us through the darkness to light.
• ILLUSTRATED THROUGHOUT: with a vibrant mix of artworks, photography and illustration.
• A HIGHLY RELATABLE BOOK: that offers comfort and support in our darker moments, while guiding us towards an optimistic future.

"The School of Life: On Self-Hatred may be the most essential of The School of Life’s essential philosophy handbooks: it reminds us, yet again, that we are not alone, that much more connects us than divides us and that self-acceptance is one of the most important keys to peace of mind." - Emma Thompson, DBE British actress and screenwriter

A guide to emotional healing and living a more self-accepting life.

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, despair and imposter syndrome.

This is a book that, with immense compassion and fellow feeling, investigates the phenomenon of self-hatred while giving pragmatic advice on how to overcome it. It asks where the feeling comes from, what it makes us do and how we might become kinder and more compassionate towards ourselves.

We have probably spent far too much of our lives disliking ourselves and attacking everything we say, do or feel, while not even realizing what we’re up to. It’s time to overcome our masochism and move towards a more self-forgiving and accepting stance. The School of Life: On Self Hatred is a guide to the more compassionate and gentle relationship we should have had with ourselves from the start, and can all achieve now.

• IDENTIFIES THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF SELF-HATRED: and provides advice for living a more self-accepting life.
• ENCOURAGES US TO DEVELOP ASSERTIVENESS AGAINST SELF-LOATHING: and gives us the tools to challenge our inner critic and deal with imposter syndrome.
• ACCESSIBLE AND PRAGMATIC: with a compassionate and realistic tone, outlining the importance of self-care.
• PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S SERIES OF GIFTABLE ESSAYS: other titles include: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, On Confidence, How to Find Love and Self-Knowledge.

A hopeful guide to living well in the 21st century.

The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine, and transportation. But with these advances, it seems, we've also seen an increase in greed, despair, and agitation. 

How to Survive the Modern World is the ultimate guide to navigating our unusual times. The book tackles our relationship to the news, our identities, our careers, our relationship to the natural world, our admiration for science and technology, our belief in individualism and secularism - and our suspicion of quiet and solitude. 

This book helps us form a calmer, more authentic, more resilient, and more light-hearted relationship to the complexities of our age. If modern times can feel like a disease, this book is both the diagnosis and the soothing, hope-filled cure.

• IDENTIFIES THE SOURCE OF SHARED ANXIETY helps us identify the sources of our sorrows in the modern world.
• PRACTICAL ADVICE on dealing with the challenges presented by capitalism, advertising and the media.
• CHAPTERS INCLUDE Media, Materialism, Family, Love, Work, Sex, Science & Religion, Democracy and Nature.
• BEAUTIFULLY PRODUCED premium gift format.

When Socrates was asked to define our highest purpose as humans, he said, “To know ourselves.”  This advice holds true. Without self-knowledge, all other efforts are in vain. 

The second title in the '40 Images' series, Self-Knowledge in 40 Images takes us on a tour of certain key ideas that we need to befriend our deeper selves, accompanied by the work of photographers and artists such as David Hockney, Cy Twombly, Edgar Degas, Isabella La Rocca González and Elise Corten. Featuring culturally and historically diverse artwork alongside a series of elegant essays inviting contemplation, this book helps us to understand how our childhoods have shaped us, what difficulties we characteristically experience in relationships and what our purpose should be. 

Modern society gives us no shortage of ambitions. We will have landed on the one that can finally brings us peace and freedom when we are ready – with the help of this book – to begin the inward journey: self knowledge.

Pair with the Know Yourself Prompt Cards, designed to help lead you through the important task of knowing yourself a little better in life.

A collection of simple - and surprisingly relevant - tools from great thinkers throughout history. 

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.

• A REFERENCE BOOK OF 60 GREAT THINKERS: and their most useful ideas.
• THE SCHOOL OF LIFE CANON: a gallery of individuals from across the millennia who have shaped the intellectual project of The School of Life.
• ORIGINAL COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUART PATIENCE
• THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE: for those seeking both answers and inspiration.
• PREMIUM GIFT FORMAT: shrink-wrapped with ribbon marker and belly band.

A journal to help us process our lives—from The School of Life’s line of beautiful, elegant journals

The Self-Reflection Journal is the first in a new range of guided journals from The School of Life, that uses a series of repeated questions to help us think about what we really want, what we are actually feeling and what might be holding us back from our goals. Each question has been careful chosen for its psychological insight and draws from the teachings of The School of Life, to guide us on a journey of self-discovery. 

The questions, such as 'What is still lovely?' direct our minds to areas that we tend to neglect. With 150 pages of questions, we can revisit these thoughts regularly and digest the concerns, emotions, and events that repeatedly trouble us. With time, we can lessen our anxieties, and begin to reach the calm, contended lives we deserve.

With its high quality cloth-bound cover, ribbon bookmark, and inspiring quotes from The School of Life throughout, this is a beautiful and thoughtful addition to any bookshelf.

The difference between a successful and a disappointing life often comes down to a critical ingredient that we overlook at our peril: confidence. 

This is a book with a practical purpose: to take us through exercises that help us rediscover the confidence we all already have inside us—the confidence that we have neglected out of habit, fear or meekness. It’s a faculty we are all endowed with and confidence can flourish with the right kind of practice and encouragement. 

This workbook contains over fifty exercises that flex our confident faculties and guide us to greater effectiveness in our relationships, in our working lives and in our approach to ourselves. This includes a Self-Esteem Audit to identify what we might have gone through in our early lives, asking  questions such as: Do you think you are essentially a good person? Were your parents essentially supportive or not? Do you hate or like being you? There are sections focusing on confidence in relationships, friendships, and at work.

This is a tool to unlock our latent powers – and help us become who we long, and deserve, to be. 

Pair with the Confidence Prompt Cards, designed to help you find confidence and battle against timidity.

A therapeutic and consoling workbook with exercises to soothe anxiety and create a state of calm.

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.

• EASY-TO-FOLLOW JOURNALING PROMPTS to explore our inner landscape and cultivate calm.
• DRAWING EXERCISES for everyone, no artistic ability required.
• A THERAPEUTIC WORKBOOK with plenty of space to track moods, set goals, and reflect.
• SOOTHING packaging and simple layout - a journal to keep close at hand.
• A TIMELY TOOLKIT to achieve calm in a frenzied, chaotic world.

• EXPLORES THE LIFE-CHANGING POWER OF UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES
• A PRACTICAL TOOLKIT for self-discovery.
• INCLUDES THOUGHT-PROVOKING EXERCISES for self-analysis.
• THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S MOST POPULAR SUBJECT the associated YouTube video "Who Am I?" has 1.5 million views.

A small “museum”—in book form— of calm 

A psychological guidebook that can help to quieten our worries and bring on a new mood of serenity and ease. 

Knowing how to be calm is one of life’s greatest skills. It doesn’t matter how well our own life is going; if our mind is frantic, happiness will always be just out of reach. 

The third title in the '40 Images' series, Calm in 40 Images is a comprehensive guide to the art of calm. Featuring the work of photographers and artists including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gustav Klimt, Gwen John, Johannes Vermeer and Edward Hopper, alongside essays to invite contemplation, it takes us systematically through the many things that unsettle us and arrives at a range of solutions to ease our spirits. Gustav Klimt’s Pear Tree (1903) reminds us that we do not need a life of fame or melodramatic relationships, we should instead make our peace with so-called ordinariness. Mark Salamon’s photograph, The Rays (2020), accompanies a guided anxiety-reducing exercise that we can partake in when the noise of the day has subsided. 

We are invited not just to understand calm, but to appreciate it with our eyes and, more crucially, discover it with all of our senses. 

Companion book to Confidence in 40 Images and Self-Knowledge in 40 Images. Pair with the Stoicism Cards for insights into building resilience and calm.

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.

• PRAGMATIC ADVICE ON how to be resilient and endure regret, so we can recover and move on from despair and catastrophe.
• WE ARE NOT ALONE explores various examples of real-world failure and reminds us that we are not alone in making mistakes.
• EMPATHETIC AND REAL written from the perspective of those who have failed and survived their failure.
• CHAPTERS INCLUDE How to Deal with the Meanness of the World, What Love Really Is and Why It Matters, Finding Perspective, Fear and Self-Hatred, and Self-Compassion.

A collection of the essential emotional lessons we need in order to thrive.

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 Founding Fathers, 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 organization 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 this 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.

• EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE essential skills and lessons to help you thrive at work, at home, and in relationships.
• GIFT beautifully packaged in premium gift format.
• A HELPFUL GUIDE to what really matters, written with directness and humanity.
• A PRIMER ON LIVING WELL philosophical concepts simplified and applied to modern life.

• THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO ETIQUETTE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
• NAVIGATING OUR MOST AWKWARD SOCIAL SITUATIONS this practical and relevant guide offers tips and scripts.
• TWENTY CASE STUDIES AND ACTIONABLE ADVICE for dealing with common social dilemmas.
• HOW TO WIN PEOPLE OVER, how to approach strangers at a party, and how to write an effective thank you note-the chapters in this book address common perplexing social situations head on.
• BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY THROUGHOUT

50 heartfelt photographs and interviews, reflecting on the universal experience of loneliness.

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.

Through fifty touching interviews and captivating portraits by the talented photographer Julia Hawkins, this transformative book uncovers the ways that loneliness touches so many of us. We hear from a diverse array of individuals whose lives have been shaped by isolation – those who feel invisible, misunderstood and alienated, as well as those who have found unexpected paths to understanding and connection.

We come to understand that we are not unique in our solitude, and that being alone is a natural part of the human experience - and so we have every reason to hold out a hand to our similarly complicated, kind and lonely neighbours. 

"These entries imaginatively connect confidence to everything from capitalism to leaving a party early, make for a thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration. Those seeking an extra shot of self-esteem will be rewarded" - Publishers Weekly

A curated selection of 40 photographs and artworks with accompanying essays examining confidence as a skill

James Baldwin on a bridge in Paris, happy in the freedom of his self-determined exile…

The Bloomsbury Group, well-mannered disruptors…

Barack Obama, captured at ease in the Oval Office…

Everyday life, unique architecture, people in movement going against the grain: in forty iconic images, On Confidence illustrates moments of happiness and ease. 

This first in a new giftable series—with photographs and short, inspiring essays, and featuring artists and photographers like Vincent van Gogh, Mary Cassat, Pablo Picasso, Adrienne Salinger, and Sian Davey — On Confidence shows us that confidence is a skill that can be learned, and used for success.

• A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH to a more meaningful life.
• PRACTICAL TIPS ON NAVIGATING ANGER, INTIMACY, AND EXCEPTIONALISM
• A GUIDE TO FINDING EXCITEMENT at work, in relationships, and within.

A collection of enlightening quotes, delivering some of the most important lessons The School of Life has to offer.

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.

The book is organized by The School of Life’s key themes – Relationships, Self-Knowledge, Sociability, Work, Calm and Leisure – that together amount to a tour around the most profound sorrows and joys of the human mind and heart. Offering comfort and consolation in a compact format with quirky illustrations by Avi Ofer, The School of Life: Quotes to Live By is ideally suited to our impatient, anxious and searching times.

• QUOTES ARE FOCUSED AROUND THE KEY MESSAGES FROM THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: on a range of themes, including - Relationships, Self Knowledge, Sociability, Work, Calm and Leisure.
• QUIRKY AND FUN ILLUSTRATIONS: throughout by Avi Ofer.
• A BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED AND CAREFULLY CURATED OBJECT: that makes for an ideal gift for others or yourself.

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, enhance our relationships, heal the wounds of the past, and help us mine our professional potential. But it is also profoundly misunderstood science.

Working with a therapist can make us less angry, improve our confidence, and, perhaps most importantly, make us more loving towards ourselves and others.

Through engaging historical analysis and relevant case studies, this book explains psychotherapy in depth: why we need it, how treatment works, and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention looks like. The book argues that psychotherapy is the single greatest step any of us can take towards self-understanding and fulfillment.

This book attempts to explain psychotherapy: why it is needed by us all, how those needs are addressed by treatment and what the outcome of a therapeutic intervention could 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 fulfillment. A course of therapy stands to render us ever so slightly less angry, self-defeating, unconfident, lost and sad.

• PSYCHOTHERAPY EXPLAINED a demystifying guide to the purpose and meaning of psychotherapy.

• UNLOCK THE POWER OF THERAPY to improve self love, communication, trust, and honesty.

• EXPLORES POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC OUTCOMES using case studies as examples.

• DEBUNKS COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS about the science of psychotherapy.

A 15th anniversary collection of The School of Life’s most popular and essential essays on self-knowledge, relationships, work and culture.

The School of Life is an organization with a mission at its heart: to help foster calm, self-understanding and greater emotional maturity. 

For the last 15 years, we have produced landmark essays on important life topics, now gathered together for the first time.

Among the essays collected here, conveniently, in one volume:

• On Confidence: a guide to throwing off inhibition in the name of a more free and creative life
• Self-Knowledge: a method for knowing ourselves better in order to make optimal choices in love and work
• Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person: a hopeful and wry survey of the trials and joys of marriage

This beautiful edition of The School of Life’s best advice is a perfect companion to carry around or keep on a bedside table— a concise compendium of some of the wisest things we’ll ever need to know.

What our readers have been saying about the individual essays

On Confidence

"Brief but insightful! Will be back for more School of Life reads. Works really well on Audible"

"Brilliant! Thought provoking. Kept concise enough to really focus on the subject and give you time to think about the subject in terms of yourself."

Self-Knowledge

"It's such a simple and small book but with a powerful message! I really needed it and I'm grateful I got to read this book and work on the exercises. The exercises are definitely a plus and they're very well thought-through!"

Just perfect. Must-read for everyone who considers at least dating, not to mention serious commitment. Beautifully exposed all the myths and concepts of love, sex and relationships. While this is very entertaining and funny, the topics are very serious and make me think and change my attitude... a lot."

Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person

"Excellent little book for perspective on a considerably important subject. If you plan on marrying, take a day and read this magnificent little title."

Essays from this series available as audiobooks:

Self-Knowledge

On Confidence

• A DARKLY COMIC BEDTIME STORY FOR ADULTS the perfect gift for parents at any stage.
• FULLY ILLUSTRATED SPREADS by Ben Javens.
• A WITTY ALTERNATIVE to the happy endings of children's books.
• REFRESHINGLY HONEST helps readers navigate the trials of adulthood with humor.

The second in a line of journals from The School of Life– a tool for checking in

This beautifully produced and high quality journal invites us to regularly check in on ourselves – what we want, where we want to change, where we need to go – in order to maximize our chances of leading a fulfilled and contented life.

With well-focused questions repeated throughout, interspersed with quotes on growth from The School of Life, this journal prompts us to clarify our goals, assess our options and plot a route to a flourishing future. By regularly answering the repeated questions, such as 'In five years, I would be pleased if...' , we can clearly track our achievements and assess where we still have room to grow.

This is a tool for a newfound feeling of lightness, creativity and purpose.

Drawing on in-depth analysis, How to Find Love explains our instinct for romantic self-sabotage and provides a crucial set of ideas to help us make safer, more imaginative and more effective choices in love.

• A GUIDE TO MAKING BETTER DECISIONS IN LOVE: and how to choose the "right" partner.
• PRESENTS THE TOOLS WE NEED: to break unhealthy relationship habits.
• PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S GIFTABLE ESSAYS SERIES: other titles include Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, Why We Hate Cheap Things, and Self-Knowledge.
• DRAWS FROM THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S CORE CURRICULUM

Confidence is a skill that anyone can learn.

Despite the confidence we build over time in our field of work, we tend to overlook the primordial need for a more free ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us in the course of our everyday lives: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, asking someone on the train to turn down their music, changing the world. 

This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it, and how we can gain more if it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently through key issues that hold us back, and gives us the tools we need to fulfil our potential. 

• LEARN THE SKILL OF CONFIDENCE and how to apply it to everyday life.
• AN IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION of confidence and how we can achieve it.
• A PRACTICAL AND INSPIRATIONAL GUIDE to overcoming imposter syndrome, self sabotage, and much more.
• PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S ESSAY BOOK SERIES including: Self Knowledge, The Sorrows of Work, The Sorrows of Love, How To Find Love, How To Reform Capitalism, What Is Culture For?, What Is Psychotherapy?, Why We Hate Cheap Things, Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person.

Anyone we might marry could be wrong for us - even just a little bit. We know that perfection is not in the cards. And yet, errors of deep-seated incompatibility in married couples seem to occur regularly. 

This informative (and funny) book examines the reasons why - and then suggests a new approach to marriage. 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 institution.

• BASED ON THE NEW YORK TIMES MOST-READ ARTICLE OF 2016
• A THOUGHT-PROVOKING ESSAY COLLECTION about relationships and marriage. 
• A PESSIMIST'S GUIDE TO MARRIAGE offering insight, practical advice, and consolation. 

A guide to understanding our own trauma and finding ways to recover from it

All of us have – to a greater or lesser extent – suffered from traumas in our lives. The less we address these traumas, the more they have a habit of manifesting as difficulties in the form of broken relationships, anxieties, depression, or even physical symptoms like insomnia and digestive issues.

'From Trauma to Healing' is a practical guide to breaking free of these traumas and finding hope for the future. In four chapters, Causes of Trauma, Symptoms of Trauma, Relocating Trauma, and Processing Trauma, we learn what trauma is, how it can affect us for decades, and how we can liberate ourselves from it in a healthy way. Exercises and question prompts throughout the book, such as word association tests and 'interviewing' the body, demonstrate strategies to recognise trauma and work through them towards healing. 

Deeply practical and packed with ideas, this is a humane and wise guide to recovering from the past, and creating the happier future we deserve.

Twenty case studies explaining how to gently deliver a range of life’s most awkward messages while causing minimal harm.

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. Occasionally we explode. And typically, we stumble about, looking for the right words – dreading that we didn’t find them and thereby causing more hurt than we should.

This is a book to help us locate the best possible words to get across a range of life’s most difficult messages. With twenty case studies drawn from relationships, friendships, work, our families, and social situations, we are gently shown what we might – in an ideal world – find ourselves saying to make our intentions known while causing minimal harm. We are guided, among other topics, to how best to end a relationship, how to make it up with a child, and how gently to let down a friend who wants more.

We laugh, we recognize our troubles – and we’re introduced to a range of deeply empathetic ways to navigate some of our most acute social dilemmas.

• GIFT: beautifully packaged in premium gift format.
• A PRACTICAL GUIDE: helpful advice on navigating a range of awkward social situations, from the everyday to the unforeseen.
• PLAYFUL ILLUSTRATIONS: a fun, entertaining read.
• ENGAGING: case studies help demonstrate effective communication in family, work, and relationships.
• SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: crucial tools for navigating social situations with ease.

Drawing as a therapeutic practice - for any level - including 80 guided drawing exercises as an aid to self-understanding and fulfillment.

When we’re young, all of us draw.

Drawing as Therapy is a collection of playful, creative prompts and exercises that introduce us to the curative powers of drawing. Divided into eight chapters, they invite us to reflect on different aspects of our life and psyche – our personality, moods, memories and passions – by attempting to render them through art. Through art, you can discover hidden byways of our minds, find new perspectives on our difficulties, summon a state of calm, and begin a process of self-recovery and healing.

The exercises won’t teach you how to draw. Instead, they will teach you an entirely new way of thinking about drawing, where there is no such thing as failure or success, only self-discovery and, in the best sense, play.

• INSPIRATIONAL this inspirational guide prompts us to express ourselves creatively and use artistic expression as a form of emotional release.
• NO ONE IS WATCHING the point is not to draw well, but to draw with authenticity, no matter your level of artistic ability.
• 80 DRAWING EXERCISES surprising, innovative, like SARK but with a British soul...
• 8 UNIQUE THEMES Self, Mood, Memory, Play, Love, Calm, Perspective & Re-enchantment.
• DRAWING AS THERAPY draws from psychological theories by Adrian Hill, Edward Adamson and Donald Winnicott.
• GIFT beautifully produced, premium gift format.
• SOLVE PROBLEMS AS YOU DRAW with research-backed therapeutic prompts.