Alain De Botton

The School of Life

Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is the ultimate soft skill of the twenty-first century. Drawing on his work in the hugely successful School of Life organisation, Alain de Botton presents a compendium of emotional intelligence. Using his trademark mixture of analysis, anecdote, insight and practical wisdom, he considers how we interact with each and with ourselves, and how we can do so better. From the reigning master of popular philosophy, this is an essential look at the skill set that defines our modern lives.

The School of Life: an Emotional Education

Simple tools from 60 great thinkers throughout history to improve your life today.

Great Thinkers

A thought-provoking essay that teaches us that confidence is not a gift from the gods, but a skill that can be learned.

On Confidence

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

What They Forgot to Teach You at School

A guide to identifying, nurturing and growing our insight and creativity for more effective thinking.

How to Think More Effectively

This book explores ideas around minimalism, simplicity and how to live comfortably with less. The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied, and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful, and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn't just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions - and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming. This book is a guide to the simpler lives we crave and deserve. It considers how we might achieve simplicity across a range of areas. Along the way, we learn about Zen Buddhism, modernist architecture, monasteries, psychoanalysis, and why we probably don't need more than three good friends or a few treasured belongings. It isn't enough that our lives should look simple; they need to be simple from the inside. This book takes a psychological approach, guiding us towards less contorted hearts and minds. We have for too long been drowning in excess and clutter from a confusion about our aspirations; A Simpler Life helps us tune out the static and focus on what properly matters to us.

A guide to greater serenity, ease, and clarity

A Simpler Life

An examination of the importance of self-knowledge, providing practical exercises to aid self-discovery.

Self-Knowledge

A fresh approach to matters of the heart, teaching us that success in love need never again be just a matter of luck.

Relationships

A guide to developing the art of finding serenity, not through meditation, but through understanding the sources of our anxiety and frustrations.

Calm

So often, we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures - while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which - if only we paid more attention - could daily bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. But we need some encouragement to focus our gaze. This is a book to guide us to the best of life's small pleasures: everything from the distinctive delight of holding a child's hand to the enjoyment of disagreeing with someone to the joy of the evening sky; an intriguing, evocative mix of small pleasures that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with new-found excitement and enthusiasm.

Small Pleasures

An exploration of what lies behind our problematic behavioural patterns in the workplace and how we can overcome them.

The Emotionally Intelligent Office

Introduces twenty-five of history's leading figures in philosophy, including Buddha, Aristotle, René Descartes, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and how their philosophical ideas continue to matter in today's world.

An Introduction to Philosophy

Big Ideas for Curious Minds

A Job to Love

Most books that want to change us seek to make us richer or thinner. This book wants to help us to be nicer: that is, less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer, less prickly... Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless and one that we neglect at our peril. This is a guidebook to the uncharted landscape of niceness, gently leading us around the key themes of this forgotten quality. We learn how to be charitable, how to forgive, how to be natural and how to reassure. We learn that niceness is compatible with strength and is no indicator of naivety. Niceness deserves to be rediscovered as one of the highest of all human achievements.

On Being Nice

A guide to making wiser, more informed choices in love, drawing on in-depth analysis to explain our instinct for romantic self-sabotage.

How to Find Love

Eva Hoffman

Lethargic inactivity can be debilitating and depressing; but for those living in the modern world, the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. We live in a hectic, hyperactive, over-stimulated age. Excessive busyness and overfilled schedules are the norm, as are their effects on our mental and emotional lives. How might we address and counter such problems, for the sake of experiencing our lives more fully? In How to Be Bored, Eva Hoffman explores the importance we place on success, high level function, effectiveness and alertness in today's competitive society. In a world where it is almost impossible to be idle, she draws upon lessons from history, literature and psychotherapy to help us embrace boredom and find meaning in doing nothing - to appreciate real reflection and enjoy the richness of our inner and external lives.

How to Be Bored

A practical and playful guide to balancing and maintaining physical and mental harmony.

Physical Exercises for Mental Wellbeing; Mental Exercises for Physical Wellbeing

Mind & Body

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. 

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

A guide to our anxious minds; offering a route to calm, self-compassion, and mental well-being.

Anxiety

A guide to navigating modern media and staying sane in a world that does not turn off. Navigating the onslaught of media is overwhelming, to say the least. We are so used to living in a media-saturated world that we are numb to the onslaught of news, images, and posts that batter us daily. As we scroll on our devices, many of us are anxious, sleep deprived, disheartened, and afraid. In this reassuring guide we learn to understand and combat what media does to our minds. It looks at the many peculiarities of modern media: its obsession with scandal, its emphasis on novelty, its capacity to fuel envy and self-hatred, its ever shorter attention span, its obsession with fame, and its proliferation across platforms and mediums. The goal of the book is to free readers from the media's tentacles in order to reach a calmer, more generous, and imaginative state of mind. Modern media is, too often, an illness; this is a cure. MEDIA AND MENTAL HEALTH considers the link between media and mental illness and looks at how we can reduce our media intake to relieve anxiety and stress. CRITICAL EYE helps us to think more critically about the media and the messages we are receiving through the news and online. "USEFUL PESSIMISM" and other chapters, including "This is not the whole world," "Think like a tragedian", and "Know who you are."

The School of Life

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