The School of Life Dictionary

In the end, it is not darkness that dooms us, but the wrong sort of hope.

We should nurture a stance of scepticism towards many of our first impulses and beliefs and submit all our significant plans to extensive rational cross-examination. Failures of self-knowledge lie behind some of our gravest individual and collective disasters.

Serenity therefore begins with pessimism. We must learn to disappoint ourselves at leisure before the world ever has a chance to slap us by surprise at a time of its own choosing.

¶ Akrasia A central problem of our minds is that

The desire for fame has its roots in the experience of neglect and injury. No one would want to be famous who hadn’t also, somewhere in the past, been made to feel insignificant.

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Secondly, many jobs are relatively meaningless because it’s very possible, in the current economy, to generate profits from selling people things that don’t fundamentally contribute to well-being, but prey instead on their appetites and lack of self-command.

4. Sexuality At the School of Life, we are aware of the scale of the hopes and challenges around sex. Although we often believe ourselves to be living in a liberated age, it remains difficult

To overcome addiction, we need to lose our fear of our minds. We need a collective sense of safety around confronting loss, humiliation, sexual desire and sadness.