It can be remarkably hard to tell other people how we really feel; it may even be tricky for us to get clear about our own moods. Mostly, if people ask how we are, we’ll just say, ‘Fine’ – knowing that we’ve provided only a sharp abbreviation of what is actually going on in our minds.

The School of Life barometer serves this purpose: it is a tool to help sharing our feelings, with cards that offer definitions of 20 moods that we can all recognize but that can be difficult to define and explain.