#The School of Life

[lovejunkie97]

[jasab]

we r not changing what happened, we r changing the way it lives in us

[9w1inprogress]

The tragedy is that, deep down, the people pleaser is terribly afraid. Something in their past has proven to them they can never be forgiven for speaking their minds. Their childhood has been a lesson in shapeshifting. Surrounding cruelty means that they had to grow into geniuses at detecting what other people wanted and at serving it up with them with near total fidelity.

— People Pleasers in Relationships

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Mind & Body

By The School of Life.

[ruler-of-neptune]

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm. There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance.

[sittingonfilm]

How To Cope When Mental Illness Shuts Down Our Minds

"It may sound odd or impolite to suggest that most of us, when we are in the grip of mental illness, are no longer capable of thinking. That’s not how it feels, of course. From the inside the inside, our minds have probably never felt so busy and so focused.

"From the moment we wake up in panic and self-disgust, we are ruminating, pondering, exploring catastrophic scenarios, scanning our past, attacking ourselves for things we have done and not done, questioning. We may rub our temples to cool them down and when eventually we fall asleep, we are exhausted by the marathons our thoughts have run inside us. Nevertheless, we may still want to insist (for the kindest and most redemptive of reasons) that we have not been thinking at all, that none of this hive of activity deserves the title of thinking; it is just illness.

"To be mentally ill is to be swamped by secretions of fear, self-hatred and despair that – like surging seawater through a pumping station control desk – knock out all our higher faculties, all our normal ability to sensibly distinguish one thing from another, to find perspective, to weigh arguments judiciously, to see the wood for the trees, to correctly assess danger, to plan realistically for the future, to determine risks and opportunities, and, most importantly, to be kind and generous to ourselves.

"None of these faculties function any longer, but �� and this is the true nastiness of the illness – we are never and nowhere alerted to our loss. We are both very ill and very unaware. It looks as though we are continuing to think as we have always done – with all the usual intelligence and reliability – but that we just have a lot more to worry about.

"Nowhere along the way does our mind generously tell us that it has begun to look at reality through a distorted lens, that it has – at some point in the day – to all effects, stopped working. No bell goes off, no hazard lights start to flash. The mind merely insists that it is giving us all the normal readings, and that we have objectively entered hell.

"Yet the truth is that we have lost command of about a third of our minds and are pulling together our ideas from the most degenerate, traumatized, unreliable and vicious aspects of ourselves.

It’s as if a group of terrorists had donned white coats and were impersonating prestigious scientists in order to lay out a set of vicious theories and prognoses.

"Once we have been through a few cycles of distorted thinking and recovered contact with reality, we should do ourselves the kindness of accepting that – on an intermittent basis – we will lose command of our higher faculties and that there is nothing embarrassing in recognizing the possibility and accommodating ourselves to it very carefully. This is the nature of an illness around which we will need to take the greatest care.

"We should start to get better at detecting when illness might be drawing in on us, what the triggers for it might be. Then when it is upon us, we should do and decide nothing. We shouldn’t start to send emails, deliver judgement on our lives or plan for the future. We should – as much as possible – stop all mental activity and rest. We might listen to music, have a long bath, watch something untaxing on television and perhaps take a calming pill.

"We should also try to plug our brain into that of someone else, to benefit from their greater powers of reason. We should have a trusted friend or therapist whom we can call on at such moments and ask them if they might re-calibrate and regulate our thoughts with an injection of their wisdom and insight. We should willingly put them in charge of determining how things are for us: they should be allowed to tell us what we are worth, what we have done, what there is to worry about – and we should do our best to discount the contrary, doom-laden signals that come from inside us.

"We may have grown up with the idea that so long as we are conscious, our minds will be working optimally. But mental illness teaches us a more complicated lesson: our higher faculties (those that give us access to reality) are extremely vulnerable and perilously prone to shut down under the sway of our emotional complexities – and to do so without telling us. We should strive to become thinkers who recognize when they are no longer able to think."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ⟡ 🌑 ⟡ ˚｡ ･ ───

[Transcript obtained from video posted on YouTube.]

[littlemut]

[remember-this-inspiration]

Our stories are guaranteed to end in loss and sadness. Why are we such addicts of these sorts of painful stories?

Because these stories play out, in our adult present, the essence of scenarios that unfolded in substantially similar ways in childhoods that we have neither understood nor liberated ourselves from at the hands of our caregivers. 

Once upon a time, the characters that are now played by our romantic partners or people we meet on dating sites were played by Mother or Father, in scripts we have lost sight of.

We repeat a narrative because specific sorts of pain and unfulfillment feel seductively familiar and because we privilege familiarity over happiness. We have an impression that a story ‘should’ go a certain way, towards darkness, while joy and satisfaction give off a feeling of eerieness and illegitimacy.

Liberation comes when we can dare to start an audit of our narrative choices. 

To help us, we might sketch out the last few relationship or dating fiascos and see what similarities there might be between them. Who left who and why? Where was the pain coming from? How did we act? And how might this be a palimpsest of what happened somewhere long ago? 

- Youtube, the school of life. Unleash your potential: mastering your mind.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm… There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance.

—Alain de Botton, The School of Life (2019)

[Scott Horton]

[lovejunkie97]

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[lakecountylibrary]

Kate's Top 3 Nonfiction Books of 2022

For Kids:

Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy by The School of Life

I loved this book. It gives readers information on philosophy in simple terms and easy to understand examples. There is also information on the philosophers of the world at the end of each chapter.

Chapters include topics like: When Someone is Angry, Maybe it's Not You Who is Responsible; Politeness Matters; Why You Feel Lonely; and What's Fair?

This book allows children to realize why adults and themselves act the way they do and gives them advice on how to handle difficult situations.

For Teens:

Punching Bag by Rex Ogle

All of Rex Ogle's books about his life growing up are heart-wrenching and difficult to read due to the subject matter, but they are highly important books for people of all ages to read. His honesty and rawness about his life story shines light on the struggles that children and teenagers may be facing at home without even knowing. Ogle's book Free Lunch is a must-read as well.

For Adults:

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams

Jane Goodall's advice about the future of our world in this book is inspiring and uplifting. She makes it seem like all is not lost in the world and we still have a chance to make the world a better and healthier place to live.

I particularly enjoyed her words on the resiliency of nature and the power of the young people in our world. I highly recommend this book!

See more of Kate's recs

[kn1ght-l1ght]

Posting this iconic piece of media that I just NEVER found online isolated except in an archived reddit thread

[philogyny08]

HISTORY OF IDEAS - Wabi-sabi

At the heart of Japanese philosophy and wisdom lies a concept called ‘wabi-sabi’; a term which denotes a commitment to the everyday, the melancholic, the somewhat broken and the imperfect. It’s a term we need a lot more of in our lives.

[permdaydreamer]

This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

[various-stormsnsaints]