The School of Life Self-Knowledge

I'm a huge fan of The School of Life YouTube channel, so I was super excited to listen to this audiobook.

First and most importantly, I couldn't be happier that the narrator was the same one as on YouTube. I think he makes the channel what it is to the viewers, and I can't imagine anyone else narrating it or the audiobook. It was such a pleasure listening this voice throughout the book and imagining the animation in front of my eyes.

At the same time, since the lack of animation of course took away part of the experience, I was hoping to get a lot more in terms of content from this book, which I did. Indeed, it's really informational, reflective and insightful - and life-changing. Especially given how short it is, the book was packed with great information, perfect for when you don't feel up for a full-length book.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Self-Knowledge is a super-quick read with concepts and exercises to help you think about and be aware of your behavior, choices, and self-regard. These are very simple exercises but of course the simplest exercises are often the most powerful.

Fiona Buckland's narration was very even, not with a lot of emotion or inflection. I found it distanced me from some of the emotional and personal topics she was discussing. But it was clear and easy to follow.

If you like to work on yourself, increase your self-awareness and have not spent a lot of time asking questions around self-discovery, this short, simple book will be a great way to get started and be introduced to some of these questions to help guide you.

with gratitude to NetGalley and Publisher Spotlight Audio/The School of Life for an advance copy of Self-Knowledge.

Gets to Some of the Nitty Gritty

Audiobook Review:
The book’s title made me think it would not be quite as “self-help” as it actually is. That's not a bad thing, as I thought it might be a little stuffy. But it is not. Each section of the book describes an aspect of self-awareness and then has exercises that help you explore the topic for yourself. For such a short book—it is only around an hour and 15 minutes long as an audiobook—it packed quite a punch. It explored things like your larger anxieties and smaller things that upset you. It encourages you to look at your emotional family tree to better understand and accept yourself, perhaps even sharing your insights with others so they understand that your actions and reactions may have little to do with them but with your emotional background instead. I am still relatively new to audiobooks, and I found myself wishing I actually had a physical book because I think it would be easier to do the exercises with the questions and prompts right in front of you. If you choose to purchase this as an audiobook, certainly have pen and paper available to take notes so you can do the exercises more easily. I thought the audiobook to be fantastic and was sad for it to come to an end as I liked the clear organization of the book and the insights gained from it.