Summary of The School of Life & Alain de Botton's The School of Life

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 We are often the last people to know what is going on inside us. We suffer because there is no easy way to introspection. We are not a fixed destination, but an eternally mobile, unfocused, and vaporous specter.
#2 Emotional skepticism is the recognition that our own minds can be faulty and misleading. It is the first step towards emotional maturity, which involves the understanding that we will never know everything, and the willingness to accept that fact.
#3 The presence of the unknown past colors and sharply distorts our perceptions of the present. We interpret what is happening in the present through expectations fostered in long years whose real nature we have forgotten.
#4 The picture doesn't show any of these things. The person who looks at it and the way they elaborate on it reveals far more about their emotional inheritance than it does about the image itself.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Happiness
• Personal development

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669351528
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on The School of Life & Alain de Botton's The School of Life
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

We are often the last people to know what is going on inside us. We suffer because there is no easy way to introspection. We are not a fixed destination, but an eternally mobile, unfocused, and vaporous specter.

#2

Emotional skepticism is the recognition that our own minds can be faulty and misleading. It is the first step towards emotional maturity, which involves the understanding that we will never know everything, and the willingness to accept that fact.

#3

The presence of the unknown past colors and sharply distorts our perceptions of the present. We interpret what is happening in the present through expectations fostered in long years whose real nature we have forgotten.

#4

The picture doesn't show any of these things. The person who looks at it and the way they elaborate on it reveals far more about their emotional inheritance than it does about the image itself.

#5

Childhood is full of emotional damage because, unlike all other living things, humans are fated to endure an inordinately long and structurally claustrophobic pupillage. We dither and linger, and as a result, we are constantly enmeshed in the attitudes, ambitions, fears, and inclinations of our parents.

#6

We can’t understand why our parents are upset with us if they are only doing their best. They are not doing anything wrong, and yet we end up with major distortions because of their actions.

#7

We are all born with emotional imbalances that we take as our personality, but they can be changed. They are the result of the ways in which we were raised as children.

#8

The character traits and mentalities that were formed in response to childhood experiences become our habitual templates for interpreting people. We make our lives harder than they should be because we insist on thinking of people as inept and mean rather than primarily the victims of what we have all traveled through: an early history that was difficult.

#9

We often have selective amnesia about our past, and this is because we are afraid of what we might discover. We keep away from ourselves because we are afraid of what we might learn. We might realize that we were, in the background, deeply furious with certain people we were supposed to love. We might recognize how much was compromised and wrong about our relationships and careers.

#10

We are natural self-deceivers. We are constantly cheerful and optimistic, even when we’re lying through our teeth. We attack and denigrate what we love but haven’t been able to obtain. We lie through a generalized cynicism that we direct at everything and everyone so as to ward off sadness about one or two things in particular.

#11

We lean on the glamour of being learned to limit all that we might actually need to learn about. We lie by pretending that we are simpler than we actually are and that too much psychology might be nonsense. We imply that not thinking very much is evidence of a superior kind of intelligence.

#12

In an emotionally healthy childhood, someone puts themselves completely at the service of the child. They assume the role of therapist, psychologist, and parent all in one. They interpret what the child can’t say, they guess what might be wrong with him, and they comfort him.

#13

In an emotionally healthy childhood, the relationship with our caregiver is steady, consistent, and long-term. We trust that they will be there tomorrow and the day after. They are boringly predictable. As a result, we are able to believe that what has gone well once can go well again, and we can let such an expectation govern our pick of available adult partners.

#14

The Dutch tradition of painting ships in violent storms has a therapeutic purpose: it conveys a moral about confidence in seafaring, and life more broadly.

#15

We are still failing to provide emotionally healthy childhoods for our children. This is not because we are sinful or indifferent, but because we have yet to learn how to master that incredibly complicated subject: love.

#16

Self-love is the quality that determines how much we can be friends with ourselves and remain on our own side. It is the quality that determines how much we can be friends with others and remain on our own side. It is the quality that determines how much we can be friends with others and ask for the rewards we are due.

#17

Candor determines the extent to which we are able to consciously admit difficult ideas and facts into our minds and accept them without denial. It is about how ready we are to learn and accept others’ opinions.

#18

When we are disappointed by others, do we put our feelings into words that allow others to understand our point. Or do we internalize the pain and act it out symbolically or discharge it with counterproductive rage.

#19

We all have questions about the world that we want to answer. These questions are difficult to answer in the affirmative, but we must at least try to know what kind of bandages are most urgently required.

#20

Psychotherapy is a tool that helps us overcome our inborn weaknesses and extend our capacities beyond what was originally gifted to us by nature. It is not different from a bucket that remedies the problem of trying to hold water in our palms, or a knife that makes up for the bluntness of our teeth.

#21

We are often told about the importance of friends, but we know that the tacit contract of any friendship is that we will not bother the incumbent with more than a fraction of our madness. A lover is another solution, but it is not in the remit of a highly patient partner to delve into and accept more than a modest share of what we are.

#22

Therapists know a lot about the unvarnished truths of human nature. They have experienced the greatest traumas as well as the smaller pains and paradoxes that exist in every person. They understand that inside every adult there remains a child who is confused, angry, and longing to have their say and their reality recognized.

#23

The therapist is there to help you face your fears and worries, and to help you find what is best for you, understood on your terms. They won’t have a preconceived view of how you’re supposed to live, just a great deal of sympathy for the complexities and the suffering you’ve endured so far.

#24

It is extremely difficult to think deeply and coherently. We constantly lose the thread. The best way to do this is to have a friend listen to us carefully and encourage us to continue what we are saying.

#25

Therapy is based on the understanding that we will not be able to transmit our key experiences in a single or two-block format. We live in time, and we must decode ourselves at different periods. We can’t be in all the moods we need to access on every occasion.

#26

The therapist’s active listening is not meandering. It is an attempt to understand, for our sake, how the subterranean operations of the past are affecting the present.