Calm

by The School of Life, Alain de Botton (Editor)

Overview

A guide to finding serenity by engaging with our thoughts.

Meditation teaches us to distance ourselves from our thoughts. The School of Life teaches us to engage with them. Rather than practicing slow breathing or drinking special teas, we can reach a state of calm by thinking. This persuasive and humorous book argues that the most powerful tool we have is the ability to remain calm.

By getting at the roots of our greatest frustrations and anxieties, Calm provides us with the essential tools we need in order to defend ourselves against panic and anger.

• A NEW APPROACH TO MINDFULNESS: from The School of Life.
• AN ENCOURAGING GUIDE TO MANAGING OUR EMOTIONS
• PRACTICAL LIFE SKILLS: for how to find-and remain-calm.
• PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE LIBRARY SERIES: other titles include Small Pleasures, Relationships, and Great Thinkers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780993538728
Publisher:	The School of Life
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Series:	The School of Life Library
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment.

The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions.

The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 7 million YouTube subscribers, 389,000 Facebook followers, 174,000 Instagram followers and 166,000 Twitter followers.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane.

Read an Excerpt

iii. Space

Sometimes we respond quite negatively to encounters with things that are much larger and more powerful than ourselves. It's a feeling that can strike us when we are alone in a new city, trying to negotiate a vast railway terminal or the huge underground system at rush hour, and we sense that no-one knows anything about us or cares in the least for our confusions. The scale of the place forces upon us the unwelcome fact that we don't matter very much in the greater scheme and that the things that are of great concern to us don't figure much at all in the minds of others. It's a potentially crushing, lonely experience that intensifies anxiety and agitation.

But there's another way an encounter with the large scale can affect us - and calm us down.

Heading back to the airport after a series of frustrating meetings, the sunset behind the mountains is magnificent: tiers of clouds are bathed in gold and purple, huge slanting beams of light cut across the urban landscape. To record the feeling without implying anything mystical, it seems as if one's attention is being drawn up into the radiant gap between the clouds and the hills, and that one is for a moment merging with the cosmos. Normally the sky isn't a major focus of attention, but now it's mesmerising. For a while it doesn't seem to matter so much what happened in the meeting or the fact that the contract will - maddeningly - have to be renegotiated by the Paris team. It's strangely calming and comforting to be absorbed in the contemplation of something vastly bigger than oneself.

Artist and philosophers have given this feeling a name: the Sublime. We experience this sensation of the Sublime whenever we are hugely impressed by something that seems much larger and more powerful than we are. It overwhelms us with its grandeur while also offering us a vivid sense of our own relative littleness. At this moment, nature seems to be sending us a humbling message: the incidents of our lives are not terribly important in the scheme of things. And yet, strangely, rather than being distressing, this sensation can be immensely comforting and calming.

The Sublime is calming because it counteracts a persistent and very normal source of distress in our lives. Our minds naturally focus on what is immediately before us. We instinctively get deeply engaged with whatever happens to be close to us in space and time. And we have a proportionally less intense, more detached relationship to things that feel very far off. It's not a surprising arrangement. Very often, what's immediately present is more relevant to our survival than what happened five years ago or might happen much later in our lives. Our minds are geared to fleeing a snake or staving off hunger. 

Translated into the terms of modern life, it means that last night's squabble over flecks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror and the work deadline of Tuesday morning feel hugely agitating - though in terms of the overall meaning of a relationship, career or of a whole life, they are in fact pretty minor incidents. The problem is, our minds are structured so as to give maximum attention to what is happening now - whereas, to actually see the importance of anything we have to situate it in a much larger frame of reference.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: Relationships i. Romantic Expectations ii. The Lack of Glamour of Domesticity iii. The Agitations of Sex iv. The Weakness of Strength
Chapter Two: Other People i. Unintended Hurt ii. In Defence of Teaching iii. In Defence of Politeness iv. On Bureaucracy
Chapter Three: Work i. Capitalism ii. Ambition iii. Patience iv. Colleagues
Chapter Four: The Sources of Calm i. Sight ii. Sound iii. Space iv. Time v. Touch
Conclusion: The Quiet Life

Editorial Reviews

***What readers are saying***

 
"This book is beautifully written and incredibly comforting. The writing itself makes you feel calm, and it seems to instill a seed of hope in you that you really can lead a more calm and peaceful life."

 
"Beautifully written application of philosophy to everyday life. Highly recommended."

 
"Engaging. Insightful. Well thought out arc of ideas on and around ‘calm’ with tangible activities one can immediately implement."

 
"What an amazing book! The structure, the wording, the examples and the references in history makes this piece a real gem. When you are going after calm in life, calm will not happen but, when you are going after a calmer life, calm will prevail. Brilliant."

 
"A wonderful book that explores all aspects of being calm."

 
"This book has helped me in an unimaginable way."

From the Publisher