The Risks of Losing a Sense of Self

The Problem with Overly Amiable 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: https://t.ly/tNyod Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/xa6lc FURTHER READING “There is a particularly poignant way to be a social disaster: through over-friendliness, a pattern of behaviour driven by the very best of motives which ends up feeling as irritating as outright rudeness. We meet the over-friendly at the office, laughing at the jokes of the senior management; behind the desk at the hotel, wishing Sir or Madam a highly enjoyable stay and across the table on a first date, lavishly endorsing their would-be partner’s every opinion about recent books and films…” You can read more on this and other topics here: https://goo.gl/jfPQtO MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on Self in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Lois de Silva http://www.loisdesilva.com #TheSchoolOfLife Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

How to be Friendly

Being polite isn't enough to win one friends. We also need to learn the art of being warm: this begins with having the right sort of relationship to our own weaknesses and foibles. 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: https://t.ly/pNbFV Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/NO7CX FURTHER READING “While politeness is of course always preferable to rudeness, there are ways of being polite that badly miss the mark and can leave us feeling oddly detached and dissatisfied. Picture the person who ends up, despite their best efforts, seeming what we can call coldly polite. They may be extremely keen to please those they are seeing, they obey all the rules of etiquette, offer their guests drinks, ask them questions about their journey, suggest they might want a little more gravy, remark on the interest of a recent prize-winning novel – and yet never manage to make their hospitality feel either engaging or memorable. It may be a long time before another meeting with them is suggested…” You can read more on this and other topics here: https://goo.gl/qC2fsK MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLrelationships SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Ignatz Higham Johnson http://www.ignatzjohnson.com/ https://vimeo.com/user9691810 #TheSchoolOfLife Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

How to Be Resilient and Robust

Much of the reason why we give up far too soon, fall into despair and abandon our projects is not because things are hard per se but because they are harder - far harder - than we had ever expected them to be. It isn’t necessarily difficulty that sinks us; it’s bad notions about what a noble task should legitimately demand. 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: https://t.ly/fpJka Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/PyR7G FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://b4f4.short.gy/pjki2i “Much of the reason why we give up, fall into despair and abandon our projects is not because things are hard per se, but because they are harder – far harder – than we had ever expected them to be. It isn’t necessarily difficulty that sinks us; it’s misconceived notions of what a task should legitimately demand. We operate with recklessly inadequate views of what it might take to have a moderately good relationship, to run a more or less viable business, to have a circle of friends, to be healthy, to build a home or to achieve balance of mind. We lose our tempers, we bang whatever machine we are fiddling with, we let out screams at broken household items, mislaid keys and incompetent colleagues, because we perceive an injustice where there is in fact only an encounter with what are entirely reasonable and, were we to have investigated further, predictable degrees of pain.” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-school-of-life-for-business/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Deanca Rensyta https://www.deancarensyta.com/showreel Title animation produced in collaboration with Graeme Probert www.gpmotion.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

What are the Alternatives to Wedlock?

Marriage brings with it a lot of problems; are there some alternatives? 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: https://t.ly/i-EoC Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/RLjge FURTHER READING “In so many areas, we’re used nowadays to questioning the status quo – and exploring alternatives. It would be odd, therefore, not to try to perform the same exercise around marriage. Here seem to be our main options for how to arrange our personal lives:…” You can read more on this and other topics here: https://goo.gl/9MgeSR MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLrelationships SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: David Horsburgh http://www.davidtheanimator.com/ #TheSchoolOfLife Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Why We Turn Cold On Our Partners

Going cold on our partners is often a sign not that we have stopped caring, but that we are - somewhere deep down - furious or hurt. 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: https://t.ly/ho0r2 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/sIgLc FURTHER READING “The story of the path to coldness in love is well known. We start off full of affection for one another and then – with time – feelings fade. We start prioritising work; we check our phones while they’re speaking; we don’t especially want to hear how their day went…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLrelationships SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Produced in collaboration with Tomás Pichardo-Espaillat http://tomatico.net/ #TheSchoolOfLife Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]