The Eight Rules of The School of Life

the school of life has produced 500 films and written 5 million words this is an enormous problem to stand any hope of remaining in anyone's mind even very good ideas need to be brief and reduced to an essence that's why for the sake of our followers or scholars as we playfully call them we have summarized everything we believe down to eight key points if you like the credo of the School of Life it goes as follows one imperfection we are inherently flawed and broken beings perfection is beyond us despite our intelligence and our science we are all from close up scared unsure full of regret longing and error no one is normal the only people we can think of as normal of those we don't as yet know very well to Friendship recognizing that we are each one of us weak mad and mistaken should inspire compassion for ourselves and generosity towards other people knowing how to reveal our vulnerability and brokenness becomes the bedrock of true friendship which we universally crave people do not reliably end up with the lives they deserve we should embrace the concept of tragedy random terrible things can and do before most lives we may fail and be good and therefore need to be slower to judge and quicker to understand be kind 3 know your insanity we cannot be entirely sane but it is a basic requirement of maturity that we try to understand the ways in which we are insane we can warn others we care about what our insanities might make us do early and in good time and before we have caused too much damage we should be able to have a ready answer and never take offense if someone asks us as they should so in what ways are you mad most of the madness comes down to childhood which will in a way unique to our situation have unbalanced us no one has yet had a normal childhood and that's no insult to the efforts of families for accept your idiocy don't run away from the thought that you may be an idiot as if this were a rare and dreadful prospect and insight accept the certainty with good grace in full daylight you are an idiot but there is no other alternative for a human being we are on a planet of seven billion comparable fools embracing our idiocy should render as confident before challenges because messing up is to be expected it should make us comfortable with ourselves and ready to extend a hand of friendship to are similarly broken and demented neighbors we should overcome shame and shyness because we have already shed so much of our pride five good enough the alternative to perfection isn't failure it's to make our peace with the idea that we are each one of us good enough we are good enough parents siblings workers and humans ordinary isn't a name for failure understood more carefully and seen with a more generous and perceptive eye it contains the best of life life is not elsewhere it is fully and properly here and now six beyond Romanticism the one is a cruel invention no one is ever holy right no indeed holy Rome true love isn't merely an admiration for strength it is patience and compassion for our mutual weaknesses love is a capacity to bring imagination to bear on a person's less impressive moments and to bestow an ongoing degree of forgiveness for our natural fragility no one should be expected to love us just as we are genuine love involves two people helping each other to become the best version of themselves compatibility isn't a prerequisite for love it is the achievement of love 7 cheerful despair we are under undue and unfair pressure to smile but almost nothing will go entirely well we can expect frustration misunderstanding misfortune and rebuffs melancholy is not rage or bitterness it is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are open to the fact the disappointment is at the heart of human experience in our melancholy state we can understand without fury or sentimentality that no one fully understands anyone else and that every life has its full measure of sorrow but though there is a vast amount to feel sad about we are not individually cursed and against the backdrop of darkness many small sweet things should stand out a sunny day a drifting cloud dawn and dusk a tender look despair but do so cheerfully believe in cheerful despair 8 transcend yourself we are not at the center of anything thankfully we are minuscule bundles of evanescent matter on an infinitesimal corner of a boundless universe we don't count one bit in the grander scheme that should be a liberation we should gain relief from the thought of the kindly indifference of spatial infinity an eternity where no one will notice and where the wind erodes the rocks in a space between the stars cosmic humility taught to us by nature history and always the sky above us is a blessing and a constant alternative to a life of frantic jostling humorless nurse and anxious pride a final point we know in theory about all of it and yet in practice any such ideas have a notoriously weak ability to motivate our actual behavior and emotions our best knowledge is both embedded within us and ineffective for us we forget almost everything our enthusiasms and resolutions can be counted upon to fade like the stars at dawn nothing much sticks for this reason we need to go back over things maybe once a day certainly once a week a true good school shouldn't tell us only things we've never heard before it should be deeply interested in rehearsing all that is theoretically known yet practically forgotten that's why we should keep the eight rules in mind and why the next step is to subscribe and to return here often our online shop has a range of books and gifts that address the most important and often neglected areas of life click now to learn more

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 449,714

Rating: 4.9603977 out of 5

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, hack, rules of life motivation, rules of life jordan peterson, how to be happy with yourself, how to be happy alone, how to be happy and positive all the time, mantras for positive energy, PL-SELF, the eight rules of the school of life, the school of life depression, the school of life loneliness, the school of life anxiety

Id: 1JCJVaK48RM

Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020