The School of Life

How to Become a More Captivating Person

5 min · 21. juni 2026
episode How to Become a More Captivating Person cover

Description

We tend to evaluate people on how interesting they are. But we are thereby liable to miss a more acute and relevant issue: how interesting does a given person make us feel? Why in the company of some do our minds quickly fill with stories, while around others, we experience ourselves as blank, dull and close to inert? FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://9qq0.short.gy/fEFTlw “We start with an unusual observation: there is a huge variance in how much we feel we have to say for ourselves around some people compared to around others; certain people make us feel boring, others do not. We tend to evaluate people on how interesting they are. But we are thereby liable to miss a more acute and relevant issue: how interesting does a given person make us feel? Why in the company of some do our minds quickly fill with stories, while around others, we experience ourselves as blank, dull and close to inert. Why – when some people ask – ‘so what have you been up to lately?’ do we positively brim with a multitude of topics, whereas with others, outwardly equally polite, do we struggle to remember that we have ever even existed?..." 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/ 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]

Comments

0

Be the first to comment

Sign up now and become a member of the The School of Life community!

Get Started

1 month for 9 kr.

Then 99 kr. / month · Cancel anytime.

  • Podcasts kun på Podimo
  • 20 lydbogstimer pr. måned
  • Gratis podcasts

All episodes

622 episodes

episode On Feeling Compelled artwork

On Feeling Compelled

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://www.theschooloflife.com/the-school-of-life-youtube/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=On%20Feeling%20Obliged%20 Learn, heal and grow. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://www.theschooloflife.com/signup/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=On%20Feeling%20Obliged%20 FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects in our articles, here: https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/on-feeling-obliged/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=On%20Feeling%20Obliged%20 “For some of us, our lives are guided – and hemmed in – by one overwhelming imperative: we must never let people down. Not just a few friends and family members, but pretty much anyone who wants anything of us. Perhaps someone wants to see us again for supper. We kept them entertained and now they want more. The problem is that we really don’t much like them – but we go anyway, because how could we not, next time and probably the twenty times after that. We give money to people we don’t trust, we stay up too late at parties we hate, we wind up on holiday with characters we have little in common with. We would feel a sense of obligation to someone…” 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: X: https://x.com/TheSchoolOfLife/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-school-of-life/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theschooloflife?lang=en CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Mike Booth https://www.youtube.com/user/somegreybloke 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]

4. juli 20265 min
episode Kierkegaard on Romance artwork

Kierkegaard on Romance

One of the most provocative analyses of love ever produced is to be found in the writings of the Danish Existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In a book entitled Works of Love, he proposed a theory which deliberately upset every leading idea that his own age liked to entertain about this hallowed concept. FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/3yNFBW8 “One of the most provocative analyses of love ever produced is to be found in the writings of the Danish Existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In a book entitled Works of Love, published in Copenhagen in 1847, Kierkegaard — then thirty-four years old — proposed a theory which deliberately upset every leading idea that his own age (in this respect very similar to our own) liked to entertain about this hallowed concept. First and most importantly, Kierkegaard insisted that most of us have no idea what love is — even though we refer to the term incessantly. The first half of the nineteenth century in Europe saw the triumph of what we today call ‘Romantic love’, involving a veneration and worship of one very special person with whose soul and body we hope to unite our own…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on WESTERN PHILOSOPHY in our playlist: https://bit.ly/3TvF5E1 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: Reflective Films http://www.reflectivefilms.co.uk Title animation produced in collaboration with Vale Productions https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

4. juli 20269 min
episode Unoccupied Chair Therapy: Repair Your Past, Better Your Future artwork

Unoccupied Chair Therapy: Repair Your Past, Better Your Future

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://www.theschooloflife.com/the-school-of-life-youtube/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=Empty%20Chair%20Therapy:%20Heal%20Your%20Past,%20Improve%20Your%20Future Learn, heal and grow. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://www.theschooloflife.com/signup/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=Empty%20Chair%20Therapy:%20Heal%20Your%20Past,%20Improve%20Your%20Future FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects in our articles, here: https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-usefulness-of-speaking-your-feelings-to-an-empty-chair/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=Empty%20Chair%20Therapy:%20Heal%20Your%20Past,%20Improve%20Your%20Future “One of the simplest and most useful exercises that psychotherapy has gifted to us is known as the Empty Chair Technique. A client who has been wrestling with their feelings towards someone is gently requested to stop discussing them in the third person and is instead invited to face a chair and start talking to this bit of furniture as if there were on it – to all intents – the specific troubling person in their life, perhaps a long dead absent father, a neglectful mother or a traitorous so-called friend…” 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: X: https://x.com/TheSchoolOfLife/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-school-of-life/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theschooloflife?lang=en CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Hannah O'brien https://www.hanobrien.com/ 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]

4. juli 20265 min
episode We Are Going to Los Angeles artwork

We Are Going to Los Angeles

Find out more about our arrival and read about the 22nd-24th February 2019 event here: https://bit.ly/2P5AV97 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/XOBRS Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/JZNJv 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/ Tumblr: http://schooloflifechannel.tumblr.com CREDITS Produced in collaboration with Reflective Films http://www.reflectivefilms.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

4. juli 20263 min
episode How Keeping a Journal Can Save You artwork

How Keeping a Journal Can Save You

Diaries are a forum in which we can raise and then galvanise ourselves into answering the large questions which lie behind the stewardship of our lives: What do I really want? Should I leave? What do I feel for them? 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/xZEFz Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/6A5XR FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/3SBtGlu “What should in an ideal world define someone as a writer isn’t that they publish books, or give talks at literary festivals or wear black; it’s that they belong to a distinct group of people who — whenever they are confused or in distress — gain the greatest possible relief from jotting things down. ‘Writers’ in the true sense are those who scribble — as opposed to drink, exercise or chat — their way out 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: Elaine Song Title animation produced in collaboration with Vale Productions https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

4. juli 20265 min