An elegant hourglass sand timer which measures 15 minutes precisely from the start of each turn. In our time-pressed and information-rich world, it can be a challenge to find a moment for ourselves. Our lives are so busy and frenetic; we are always forgetting to make time for what really matters. The result is that anxiety builds and nagging concerns emerge in unhelpful ways. This hourglass sand timer reminds us to carve out 15 minutes a day for what truly counts. It demarcates a very modest and manageable period to dedicate to the important things we so often let slide - finally writing that letter to an old friend, rationally analysing our career ambitions, or playing in a concentrated way with a child. It’s an antidote to wasted days and a counter to the urge to procrastinate, prompting us to do a minimum of what really counts.

A card game to foster connection and closeness

We tend to chat all the time with our partners, but often not about what really counts - the sort of topics that clear the air, that reintroduce a spirit of fun, that draw us together, that make us remember what is really special about being part of a couple. 

This is a pack of cards to foster connection and closeness, which can (strangely but truly) be generated almost on command by the right sort of conversations. Here are 100 questions that help couples to rekindle affection. They lead naturally to easy talks about what we are ready to forgive, what we deeply appreciate, what remains exciting and what is especially worth cherishing. This is a deceptively simple game with life-changing potential. The cards cover five categories: Appreciation, Aspiration, Desire, Forgiveness, and Growth.

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.

We’re dependent on language to express how we feel, and yet words often feel vague or inaccurate. There are lots of moods, needs and feelings that our own language has not yet properly pinned down. 

The perfect word - even if it comes from abroad - helps us explain ourselves to other people, and its existence quietly reassures us (and everyone else) that a state of mind is not really rare, just rarely spoken of. 

This set of cards defines some of our favorite words from the world’s languages and marries them up with complementary images to create cards that bring some of our most important feelings into focus. We’ve created them to prompt greater reflection about the nature of language and emotions. These cards are designed to reflect the excitement we find in encountering an old photograph or an object in a flea market or antique stall, one that feels familiar yet foreign and is thus infinitely evocative.

Examples:

DUENDE (Spanish): A heightened sense of emotion created by a moving piece of art. 

FORELSKET (Norwegian): The euphoric feeling at the beginning of love. We can’t believe someone so perfect has wandered into our lives. They enhance and complete us. We might report: ‘I was overpowered by forelsket as our fingers interlaced…’ 

YŪGEN (Japanese): Gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious and elusive beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky, and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility.

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.