updated 4d ago
Self-Knowledge (Essay Books)
Afflicted by a lack of self-love, romantic relationships become almost impossible, for one of the central requirements of a capacity to accept the love of another turns out to be a confident degree of affection for ourselves, built up over the years, largely in childhood.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
The origin of the voice of the inner judge is simple to trace: it is an internalisation of the voice of people who were once outside us.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
recognising a feeling doesn’t mean you follow it to a conclusion.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
There are three key moves a good friend would typically make that can provide a model for what we should, with a new commitment to self-love, be doing with ourselves in our own heads. Firstly, a good friend likes you pretty much as you are already. Any suggestion they make, or ambition they have about how you could change, builds on a background of
... See morefrom Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
We term it Philosophical Meditation, a practice with the premise that a decisive share of the trouble in our minds comes from thoughts and feelings that have not been untangled, examined and confronted with sufficient attention. Philosophical Meditation needs a time of the day when nothing much will be expected of us. We might be in bed or on the s
... See morefrom Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
Psychotherapists have developed a special term to capture what we inherit emotionally from the past: they call it our ‘transference’. In their view, each of us is constantly at risk of ‘transferring’ patterns of behaviour and feeling from the past to a present that doesn’t realistically call for it.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
Our overall nervousness declines when our anxieties are systematically laid out and examined.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
We are sad about particular things, but confronting them would be so arduous that we generalise and universalise the sadness. We don’t say that X or Y has made us sad; we say that everything is terrible and everyone is awful. We spread the pain in order that its particular, specific causes can no longer be the focus of attention. To put it metaphor
... See morefrom Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago
We don’t need people to be perfect; we simply need them to be able to explain the greater part of their inherited imperfections calmly and in good time, before we are enmeshed in the sufferings they can otherwise cause us.
from Self-Knowledge (Essay Books) by The School of Life
Grisha Samus added 6mo ago