The School Of Life - Know Yourself Prompt Cards
60 prompt cards designed to help lead you through the important task of knowing yourself a little better in life.
It can be hard to understand who we really are: what we want, how we feel and why we react as we do. This lack of self-knowledge can lead us into unhappy relationships, unsatisfactory jobs, and unsustainable spending habits. No wonder Socrates summed up all the counsel of philosophy in just two words: 'Know Yourself'.
These Know Yourself Prompt Cards are designed to assist us in a journey of self-knowledge. They present us with a range of ideas and questions that encourage self-reflection, allowing us to become a little more aware of what we really need and what our priorities and potential might be. Each card carries an exercise on one side and a piece of analysis on the reverse to help you gain insight and clarity on that ever elusive subject: yourself.
Read an extract from the cards >>
Example Cards
Q: If I knew I couldn’t fail, in my professional life, I’d try to...
A: We are often so scared of being humiliated by the gap between our aspirations and our reality that we don’t even dare to voice any aspiration - thereby conclusively ensuring that it can never come true. We owe it to ourselves to state what we deep down feel we could do and be - even if it never comes right.
Q: What sort of things have made you envious recently?
A: We’re taught to be appalled by envy and never to feel it. But the things and people we envy in fact provide us with a very important map of our desires - which can teach us vital clues about ourselves. Keep a diary of envious feelings; and allow an autobiography of your future to emerge from it.
The design is graphically minimal, using neutral colours and a nostalgic Swiss 1950s typeface to set the tone for uncluttered thinking.
How to Use the Cards
You might...
Lay out the cards out on a table and contemplate the questions at hand.
Go through one card each day to fully focus on each question and encourage long term self reflection.
Note down with a pen and paper some of the changes you would like to make and inner milestones you would like to reach moving forward.
More Tools for Self-Knowledge
Class: How to Develop Self-Knowledge - Our regular class can equip you with tools to help clarify vague emotions and thoughts and provide a newly clarified sense of the distinctive nature of your personality; what you need to be cautious around, and what your priorities might be.
Book: Self-Knowledge - A book from The School of Life Press.
Article: Know Yourself - An article on our blog, The Book of Life.
60 cards in box | 104mm x 73mm x 36mm.