The School of Life Notebook – Ideas

A linen-bound notebook designed to accommodate ideas, aspirations and worries in the therapeutic activity of your thoughtsWe have so many vague feelings of hurt, envy, anxiety, and regret, but for the most part we never stop to make sense of them. It’s too un-comfortable and especially difficult because we are so often busy and frazzled, hyper-connected yet a bit lonely. To really understand what we feel and think, we must turn away from distractions, common sense, and other people’s opinions. We need to develop intimacy with ourselves. Our un-thought thoughts contain clues as to our needs and our longer-term direction. Writing them out is key. Through writing, we recognise patterns to observe and, perhaps, outgrow. We can strategise – a remarkably neglected task. We can ask ourselves why we make the choices we do. We can question faulty narratives and create new ones. We can consider ideas before we commit to them, and reinforce good ideas we already know. One of the truly frustrating features of our minds is that the more interesting or pertinent our ideas happen to be, the more they have a tendency to escape our grasp. They streak across consciousness like a comet in the night sky, illuminating everything for an instant, then leaving us back in darkness.To encourage ourselves to know our minds, a blunt demand that we should ‘think harder’ may not be the best approach. In order to give new, important ideas the best possible chance of developing, we may have to lie in wait for them with some of the patience of an astronomer. We should accept that our brains are strange, delicate instruments that evade our direct commands and are perplexingly talented at warding off the very ideas that might save us or help us flourish.A5 linen-bound notebook | 192 pages | 210mm x 148mm