Self-understanding, calm and emotional maturity. All our content is available on our app and website: www.theschooloflife.com We offer online psychotherapy: www.theschooloflife.com/therapy We publish one film a week, on Wednesdays at 14.00hrs GMT. Become a Member and you’ll gain access to a range of tools – articles, therapies, videos, a podcast, conversation cards and an extraordinary social network (in person and virtual) of like-minded people.
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1:3028K views · 2d ago · 1:30
Many of us inhabit bodies and faces that don’t look as we feel they should. It’s one of the most painful aspects of being human. Here are a few minutes of consolation and wisdom. 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
2:2859K views · 2d ago · 2:28
If our memories were truly infallible, we would be haunted by the perfection of lost moments and forced to howl in continuous heartbreak. In this film, we explore how forgetting is not a failure, but a quiet, merciful design that allows us to heal and survive.
1:2337K views · 5d ago · 1:23
Guest: Over-Friendly People
Friendliness is a great virtue. Over-friendliness can be an unexpected problem. 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
2:50310K views · 9d ago · 2:50
We are constantly told to celebrate the endless options modern technology gives us in our search for love. We swipe through thousands of profiles, believing that the perfect match is just a few dates away. Yet true psychological maturity begins when we realize we don't actually have that many options at all. Anyone we choose will ultimately offer their own version of human folly, childhood baggage, and communication struggles.
1:3042K views · 12d ago · 1:30
One of the hardest things in the universe to understand is the interior of our own minds: we can have spent decades on the earth before we've grasped even very basic things about who we are and how we function. It's not for nothing that the Ancient Greeks felt philosophy had only one command: Know yourself! But however arduous, the journey can be facilitated by a few well-aimed bits of advice...
1:3053K views · 16d ago · 1:30
The clue to a healthy, adequate adult life lies somewhere we often don't look: in our childhoods. It's in childhood that, if things go more or less right, we learn the most important lessons about life at the hands of those who love us. Being given love isn't simply pleasant, it quite literally saves and educates us.
2:21144K views · 16d ago · 2:21
When love is working, we desperately want it to last forever. We demand promises for the next half century, building our emotional lives on the illusion of absolute permanence. Yet everything in us and around us is in constant motion, and our history is full of things we thought would never end. In this film, we explore the liberating philosophy of impermanence, showing how accepting that nothing is promised can actually free us to deeply savor today.
1:2743K views · 19d ago · 1:27
The concept of being triggered, though it may at times be overused, sits on top of a hugely important concept in psychological life. One moment we are calm, the next we are catapulted into despair and terror. It may be important to know how to be scared or incensed when situations actually demand it, but it is also deeply counterproductive to be visited by powerful emotions that aren’t warranted by what lies before us and that fail to advance our interests in any way.
3:43177K views · 23d ago · 3:43
Do you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do this click here SOCIAL MEDIA Produced in collaboration with
1:25183K views · 23d ago · 1:25
Not having enough sex in a relationship could sound like a rather trivial issue, to be laughed off in front of others. But in truth, a shortage of sex threatens relationships like almost nothing else – and deserves thought and attention.
1:1891K views · 1mo ago · 1:18
The pressure to be in a relationship, and the suggestion that anyone who isn’t in one is weird and pitiable, has very bad consequences for us all, forcing people into choices they shouldn’t necessarily have to make. 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
4:4387K views · 1mo ago · 4:43
Yet we often reserve our awe only for historically endorsed relics while ignoring the peculiar brilliance of the present. In this film, we explore a revolution in living: learning to view our daily lives not as mundane routines, but as an extraordinary exhibition waiting to be appreciated right now.
1:18101K views · 1mo ago · 1:18
In theory, we're nowadays allowed to get together with pretty much anyone we like. And yet, at a psychological level, we aren't free to love just any suitable person. We have a type - and strangely and awkwardly, these types are often not those who stand a chance of making us maximally happy.
3:51190K views · 1mo ago · 3:51
The truth is much deeper: they are still behaving like the clever children they once were, using brilliant survival strategies that have simply run on for decades too long. In this film, we explore how our childhood adaptations quietly poison our adult romances—and how a little understanding can transform our fury into compassion.
1:1334K views · 1mo ago · 1:13
Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now SOCIAL MEDIA
1:1655K views · 1mo ago · 1:16
The real cruelty of unrequited love is that we don’t get to know our beloveds well enough to find out their flaws – and therefore to lose interest in them gradually. The best cure for love is in essence: get to know them better.
5:44191K views · 1mo ago · 5:44
The tragedy is that while every lesson of love is simple to state, each one takes years of heartbreak and exhaustion to truly learn—and there are well over a hundred traps waiting on the syllabus. In this film, we explore the bittersweet reality of emotional education and why we secretly just want an uneducated, illiterate happiness to finally have its turn.
1:2793K views · 1mo ago · 1:27
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 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox
4:52165K views · 1mo ago · 4:52
In every relationship, a deep tension exists between two contrasting needs: the desire for complete togetherness and the vital necessity of separatedness. We want to merge, yet we also need our own space to think, work, and stay intact.
2:56144K views · 1mo ago · 2:56
When we hear a tragic dating story about an ex who betrayed or abandoned someone, our immediate reaction is pure sympathy. But there is another thought that should quietly cross our minds: this might be one of the most promising things we could ever learn about a potential partner.
2:43237K views · 2mo ago · 2:43
When we are in deep despair, our minds convince us that we know exactly what the future holds: only more darkness, misery, and sadness. But from our vantage point under the bedclothes, do we really know what’s coming? Whether a sudden breakup or a massive life disaster is actually a tragedy—or the start of something strangely fruitful—is something we simply cannot know yet.
4:06299K views · 2mo ago · 4:06
"We are used to thinking of heartbreak as one thing, a single calamity with a single sort of pain. But anyone who has been through more than one endings knows a stranger truth. Not all unwilling endings hurt the same. There are, on closer inspection, three distinct sorts of heartbreak. It is worth going through them in ascending order of pain, for what distinguishes them tells us something unexpected about what heartbreak actually is..."
1:2447K views · 2mo ago · 1:24
Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now SOCIAL MEDIA
5:09108K views · 2mo ago · 5:09
For many of us, the search for love is secretly sabotaged by a deep-seated fear of intimacy and an unconscious loyalty to solitude. In this film, we explore a brilliant diagnostic question to help you discover whether you're rejecting bad matches—or running away from genuine affection. "On the face of it, ‘not liking’ someone during the dating game is everyone’s great prerogative.
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