Know Yourself

We may spend years mastering the external world – acquiring degrees, advancing careers, building families – without ever turning inwards to make sense of the person orchestrating it all: ourselves. Know Yourself is a guide to the elusive, essential task of self-knowledge. With clarity, gentleness and depth, it explores why we are often mysteries to ourselves, how our childhoods quietly script our behaviours and why seemingly trivial experiences – an abrupt word, a strange dream, a lingering mood – can hold the keys to profound insight. Drawing on the wisdom of philosophy and psychotherapy, this book teaches us how to tune in to our inner signals, revisit the past without fear and better understand our desires, fears, patterns and longings. It is a call to begin the lifelong project of making sense of who we are – so that we might suffer less, connect more deeply with others and lead calmer, freer lives. Details Measures 18 x 12,5 cm Counts 192 pages Features hardcover The School of Life x Misc Store Amsterdam Alain de Botton founded The School of Life in 2008. His aim was to make philosophy — long seen as the inaccessible, inauthentic stuff of academies and archives — a functional aspect of modern life. The care with which ancient philosophers thought about their lives remains a valuable antidote to the generalised anxiety of our era. The school thus posits that ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics are as relevant to us today as they were in ancient Greece. Even if Epicurus never had social media burnout, understanding his thinking can lead us to a healthier relationship with, for example, our phones — and by extension, with one another. We began stocking The School of Life’s series on work, gratitude and pleasure as a way of thinking through modern day issues. We admire their series for the capacity to stimulate reflection, and their ability to give a new perspective on age old problems. At its core, it is a set of strategies for finding meaning in the modern world — so that we can appreciate small pleasures and the things that might go unnoticed.