Calm: Educate Yourself in the Art of Remaining Calm, and Learn how to Defend Yourself from Panic and Fury

by The School of Life

You are enraged because, somewhere in your mind, you have a perilous faith in a world in which car keys simply never go astray.

when it comes to relationships, expectations are the enemies of love.

Love is the discovery of harmony in some very specific areas – but to continue with this expectation is to doom hope to a slow death.

someone close to us is likely to have left us feeling dirty and culpable – and as a result, we now travel through society assuming the worst,

We need to aim compassion in an unexpected place: at those who annoy us most.

teach others how we’re feeling, what we want, what is paining us, the way we think things should be.

Being in a position not to mind too much if our lessons haven’t really had the desired impact can be the best way of ensuring that we will stay patient with the student – and thereby succeed.

An inner voice always used to be an outer voice. We absorb the tone of others:

Part of becoming a good teacher means altering how we speak to ourselves – and then, in turn, others.

We need to incorporate a voice that separates out achievement from love: that reminds us that we may be worthy of affection even if we fail and that being a winner is only one part, and not necessarily the most important part, of one’s identity.

We need an alternative voice that can pause our runaway fears and remind us of the strengths we have latent within

We move from irritating explanations – the company doesn’t care, tech people are idiots – to less inflammatory and more accurate ones: the pursuit of efficiency will inevitably produce a certain number of maddening cases that don’t fit the rule;

we need to have the right sort of streets, train stations, libraries, kitchens and clothes in order to be the right sort of people.