Reading

Ideas from outside have a huge role to play in healing ourselves inside. The School of Life has produced a library of exceptional books that together illuminate, soothe, console and explain all that may be painful and sorrowful.

Six Themes for Your Reading Journey

The School of Life aims to foster self-understanding, fulfilling relationships, meaningful work, a calm state of mind, interesting leisure hours and nourishing friendships. To this end, we’ve grouped our books – as well as a few prompt cards – into six central themes.

Self-Knowledge

Self-Knowledge

It is only on the basis of an accurate sense of who we are that we can make reliable decisions – a lack of self-knowledge leaves us open to accident and mistaken ambitions. However, armed with the right sort of self-knowledge, we have a greater chance of avoiding errors in our dealings with others and in the formulation of our life choices. We offer a range of tools to help us to understand the hard-to-access bits of our minds.

Find out more
Relationships

Relationships

Relationships is an area where we too often get stuck, unable to make ourselves understood or find the sort of love we need. This is largely due to a myth that loving another human should be something we all naturally know how to do. Far from it; we believe that love is a skill, not just an emotion – and that it’s a skill we all have to learn and carefully rehearse. We offer a range of tools that teach us how to love, communicate and flourish in relationships.

Find out more
Work

Work

It can be so hard to identify work that is truly in line with our talents and aspirations, or if we have found it, to develop the capacities that enable us to be confident and resolute in the face of all the challenges it presents. We have developed a range of books and tools to help us find a way through the labyrinth.

Find out more
Calm

Calm

Modern life seems almost designed to generate constant anxiety – and to deny us the chance for calm. We have developed a range of tools to help us unpick the causes of anxiety – and assist us in growing into the serene people we long and deserve to be.

Find out more
Leisure & Culture

Leisure & Culture

We spend so much of our lives at work, we are often exhausted and out of ideas when it comes to our free time. At the School of Life, we believe in learning how to make the best possible use of the time we have to ourselves – and offer a range of books and tools to ensure that we get the most out of a range of leisure pursuits, opening our eyes to the broader world and to fresh possibilities.

Find out more
Sociability

Sociability

Knowing how to get the most out of the people we meet, live with and work around is fundamental to our chances of a fulfilled life. We’ve written books to help us navigate the challenges of achieving a truly fulfilled social life. We’ve explored how to start more interesting conversations, how to be nice (and why it’s important), and how we can enjoy our relationships with friends and family more deeply.

Find out more

Five Steps to Change

Discover other steps on your five-step journey to healing

Therapy FAQs