Episode
The One Question You Need to Know Who You Are
- Podcast
- The School of Life
- Published
- Jun 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 335
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG1410729445.mp3
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-school-of-life-7778042/episodes/the-one-question-you-need-to-know-who-you-are/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-school-of-life-7778042/the-one-question-you-need-to-know-who-you-are.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
There is one question that, perhaps more than any other, gets to the root of who we are and what motivates us: “What did I need to do in childhood to win the support and approval of my parents?” We might - to sharpen the picture - need to lean on a few subsidiary enquiries… 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://www.theschooloflife.com/the-school-of-life-youtube/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=The%20One%20Question%20You%20Need%20to%20Understand%20Who%20You%20Are Learn, heal and grow. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: https://www.theschooloflife.com/signup/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=The%20One%20Question%20You%20Need%20to%20Understand%20Who%20You%20Are FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects in our articles, here: https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-one-question-you-need-to-understand-who-you-are/ “There is one question that, perhaps more than any other, gets to the root of who we are and what motivates us: What did I need to do in childhood to win the support and approval of my parents? We might - to sharpen the picture - need to lean on a few subsidiary enquiries: To please my father, I needed to… To please my mother, I needed to… Not to upset my mother, I needed to… Not to upset my father, I needed to… Whatever might be claimed, no family ever gives its offspring unconditional love; there is always, more or less subtly, something that one has to do and to be - and other things that must at all costs be skirted…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://b…