The philosopher Spinoza shows us that our minds possess an under-appreciated ability to adopt a broader perspective, from which our anxieties appear vanishingly small - and eminently manageable.

Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/eTyMq

Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://t.ly/1qhsJ

FURTHER READING

You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/2EIReVF

“One of the most useful things about our minds is that they can in some moods allow us to step outside of ourselves – and consider our death from a wholly dispassionate perspective, as if it were someone else who would have to go through the event and as if we could understand it in the same way that a stranger four centuries from now might, in other words, as if it might not in the end be such a big deal at all, just an inevitable return to an atomic mulch from which our life was only ever a brief and unlikely spasm…”

MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE

Watch more films on SELF in our playlist:
http://bit.ly/TSOLself

SOCIAL MEDIA

Feel free to follow us at the links below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/

X: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/

CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Natalia Ramos
http://www.nataliarama.com/

Title animation produced in collaboration with

Vale Productions
https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/