The School The School of Life

A guide to breaking free from the enduring, and sometimes damaging, behavioral patterns learned in childhood. When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we once were. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be struggling, is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves in our earliest years. Perhaps we were over-disciplined and cowed, not allowed to be willful or difficult--and so learned to tell white lies and people-please. Or perhaps our caregivers were preoccupied or fragile and so we had to assume the role of parent, burying our true needs and desires deep underground. When we thoroughly examine our upbringings, the larger implications for our adult selves are clear to see. Once we understand the roots from which our flaws stem, we can set about correcting 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 in the future. It explores to what extent we can pin our actions in the present to our experiences in the past, and how we might then break free from the learned patterns of our childhoods.

How to Overcome Your Childhood

A practical guide to traveling in the best way possible, featuring 20 essays for inspiration and advice in a broad range of scenarios.

How to Travel

One of the things we all deeply crave, and all richly deserve, is a more exciting life. We know well enough that many things have to be routine, hard and a little bit boring. But we also rightly sense that, if only we can find a way, our lives could be rendered intermittently more joyful, intense, thrilling and beautiful.This is a guide to the more exciting life we know could be ours. It isn't about the outward things we might do: travel, parachute out of airplanes or learn a foreign language. This is a book of psychology and about how we can nurture a sense of inner liberation, accept our desires and aspirations and then have the courage to set ourselves free. Perhaps for too long we have resigned ourselves to things that aren't fair or necessary, we have felt too constricted (and perhaps unloved) to communicate well with others and the proper expansion of our characters has been sacrificed for the sake of compliance.Now is a chance to recover some of our spirit, and to become open to the full intensity, beauty and mystery of life and to the richness of our own possibilities. Here is a guide to that more exciting life we know should - and can - be ours.

A More Exciting Life

A thought-provoking guide to one of the greatest questions we will ever face--what is the meaning of life? To wonder too openly or intensely about the meaning of life can seem a peculiar, ill-fated and faintly ridiculous pastime. It can seem like a topic on which ordinary mortals cannot make much progress. In truth, it is for all of us to wonder about, define and work towards a more meaningful existence. This book presents a range of areas in which we might seek the meaning of life, including love, family, friendship, work, self-knowledge and nature. We learn why certain things feel meaningful while others don't, and consider how we might introduce more meaning into our activities.

The Meaning of Life

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.Our societies talk a lot about how to succeed: we'd end up so much wiser and calmer if we learnt how to cope better with the more likely scenario of failure. This is a book packed with dignified, sensible, kindly suggestions about how to approach failure: how to deal with friends, how to cope with enemies, how to endure regret, how to pick oneself up, how to accept oneself despite one's flaws, and how to endure and thrive in new, less than ideal circumstances.It's a perfect volume for anyone who has ever had a relationship breakdown, suffered a career reversal, made enemies, bungled a project or wasted their time - in other words, for all of us. When we fail, it can sometimes seem as if we are alone in this however, in truth, there is nothing more human than to fail - and nothing wiser and more necessary than to learn to fail well.

How to Succeed at Defeat

On Failure

Life of School the

Examining the psychological impact of the way we eat food, this thought-provoking book explores nutrition for the mind and body.

Thinking and Eating

Philosophy is a discipline committed to helping us live wiser and less sorrowful lives. This book artfully draws together 40 of the greatest and most useful ideas found in philosophy, taking us on a journey around key concepts from both Eastern and Western cultures.We are invited to sample the distinctive wisdom of Eastern philosophy via tea drinking ceremonies, walks in bamboo forests, contemplations of rivers and ritualised flower arranging sessions. From Western culture we seek the teachings of some of the greatest minds throughout history including Machiavellianism and Stoicism.This essential guide to philosophy reminds us of the wit, humanity and relevance of a number of great philosophers including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Buddha. Essential thoughts about love, work, anxiety, self-knowledge andhappiness are examined, highlighted and inspiringly presented here so they can work their consoling effect where it is most needed: in our daily lives.

Philosophy in 40 Ideas

This insightful title explores children's relationship with and understanding of architecture and its impact on their world. 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.

What Adults Don't Know about Architecture

"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 behaviour, deep frustration and a whole host of difficulties further down the line. 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. 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"--Back cover.

Emotional Menagerie - Feelings from a to Z

A fresh perspective on a guide to art for children, exploring its import and meaning through artworks from around the world. 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.

What Adults Don't Know about Art

This book is made up of 26 small essays that aim provide understanding of and consolation for the trials and pleasures of parenting

26 Essays to Reassure and Console

The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting

An essential guide to emotional wellbeing for children; tackling everyday issues to facilitate happier, healthier lives.

The School The School of Life

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