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

by The School of Life

Calm has a natural and deep appeal.

Every worry, frustration, episode of impatience or burst of irritation has significant wisdom to reveal to us, so long as we take the trouble to decode it.

We are creatures deeply marked by our expectations.

The idea of happy coupledom taps into a fundamental picture of comfort, deep security, wordless communication and of our needs being effortlessly understood and met.

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

Everyone’s childhood was unbalanced. Any upbringing will be imperfect in important ways.

Getting from being a baby to a reasonably functional adult is never a flawless process. We are all, in diverse ways, damaged and insane.

One of the most fundamental paths to calm is the power to hold on, even in very challenging situations, to a distinction between what someone does – and what they meant to do.

because we are the prisoners of past patterns we haven’t yet understood.

we are called upon to ‘teach’ almost every hour of every day: teach others how we’re feeling, what we want, what is paining us, the way we think things should be.

means that one knows one is adding to the difficulties by fuming and seething to no good effect.

Impatience is not so much frustration at things taking a long time in any absolute sense, but the feeling that they are taking longer than they should. Sometimes this may truly be the case. But often the problem is not so much in the time ‘things’ take as in our assumptions about how long they are supposed to take.