What are the Arts of Life? They begin with knowing yourself, and what you need, prefer and value. This is a firm foundation for creating personal and professional changes.

The arts of life are simple, and involve learning who you are.

When you know yourself and understand what makes you tick, then you can begin to lead a more balanced and meaningful life. You no longer get stuck in the doldrums, or in emotional, patterned reactions to adversity that no longer serve you well.

The arts which help us all feel empowered to create a richer life are :

1. Discovering what we prefer doing, who we prefer being - and choosing how to think, feel and behave.
2. Finding work, relationships and ways of living which best suit us - and behaving authentically, according to our preferences, most of the time.
3. Being "response-able" - choosing the pace, style, location, and timing of many of our activities. This is taking responsibility for ourselves.
4. Finding ways to be true to oneself much of the time - the natural, authentic self who knows how to enjoy life, and wants to stop efforting and struggling so much.
5. Understanding more about the nature of our relationship with our subconscious - how it will resist and sabotage, and hold us back from doing things it perceives as dangerous. We can learn how to work with it, helping us feel more confident about change.
6. Understanding and accepting that we cannot anticipate, change or control everything! When we know ourselves well, we can better manage our responses to adversity and recover more quickly. Psychologists call this "self-regulation".
7. Developing the skills and values of creativity, resilience and enterprise - because we cannot possibly know what the future holds. Together, these empower individuals to lead themselves through change to stop blindly following paths set out by others who influence our thoughts, feelings and reactions - like parents, teachers, media or other groups (cultural, social, religious etc.)
8. Spending some time lost in the flow of creative or reflective activities we love - for it is a positive antidote to life in our fast-moving consumer society, and reconnects us to aspects of our younger self.

Definitions - Some key terms used here :

Resilience and self-regulation : the ability to return to even-keel and rationality, to deal responsibly with the demands facing you

Creativity : the ability to imagine authentic possibilities for yourself and others, and make them happen - which may be a creative practice, or simply living and working more creatively

Enterprise : the ability to take responsibility for oneself and one's ambitions/dreams, to try to make them happen and not blame others