Life skills can be defined as the skills you acquired to find a way out of your problems. They help you to cope with the urges and tests of your life. They helped you to manage your life in a disciplined manner and you get productive using these life skills in due course you achieve whatever you want in your life. Their directions can be from personal actions to personal development or personal actions to the change of surroundings to make your environment productive for you. Basic life skills offer you the personal, interpersonal, leadership, financial and academic skills you need to learn to achieve the holy grail in your life on the personal and interpersonal levels. A normal person learns life skills by facings troubles in his life and experiencing how to cope with these problems but if you have basic knowledge of life skills you can use them to avoid these problems in daily life. Life skills are important to luxuriate your life.
WHY ARE LIFE SKILLS IMPORTANT?
Life skills are important as they can lead to
SELF-AWARENESS. Which is the main object of life skills. Self-awareness is the first step to setting goals in your life. It empowers us to change and helps us to identify the areas of strength and areas which needs modifications. It increases productivity and self-confidence. It leads to positive self-development and encourages your self-esteem.
YOU CAN RULE YOUR LIFE. You can rule your life according to you because it develops self-control and you have gained trust in yourself. Ruling your life makes you more organized, makes us work out of your comfort zones, and leads to fast progress.
TRANQUIL LIFE. Tranquil life is important to live a healthy life, you cannot eliminate stress from your life but imagine not stressing for 60 percent of your problems. It improves your mood, you will work more efficiently, your energy level will increase, your relationships will improve, and also leads to productivity.
ACHIEVING GOALS. Everyone in this world wants to be successful and it is only possible when your life is organized your life will be organized when you are disciplined and know life skills to ace in your daily routines and ultimately in your life. It also makes you creative and also helps in making decisions in daily life.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE SKILLS?
PRACTICING. No one can have zero life skills but obviously, you can add a lot to your life to upgrade your life. Life skills are not essential for your survival but they are essential to get a good life a person possibly can have. You have one life and you mean to get the most out of your life. Building habits and practicing them is essential as you will be committed to learning more life skills. A life without habits is without directions and directions, you cannot reach a destination.
JOURNALING. Journaling is highly recommended for time management and 50 percent of life problems solve after time management. Journal about your thoughts and goals and try to stick to the routine. Make sure to make a room for alternations. Make a deadline for your projects and make sure to meet the deadline by prioritizing your tasks.
BE CURIOUS. Be curious to discover yourself and your surroundings. Curiosity can change your vision for seeing the world. When you are curious you get knowledge and understand. Accepting yourself is another way to start self-improvement if you will not accept flaws you cannot think about transforming yourself into a better you. It is the core to start learning.
BE ACTIVE. Be active to do your tasks laziness is going to ruin your efforts no matter what stage of life you are at. Take instant actions in that way you will get motivated for your next tasks. Force yourself to do tasks out of your comfort zone.
BE PRODUCTIVE. Being productive means getting fruitful results after doing tasks. Productivity is not a destination it is a route. Some days you are productive, other days you are unproductive. Avoid multitasking to improve your focus and get things done on time. Avoid distractions to be productive.
TYPES OF SKILLS:
There are several types of skills required in different areas of life but here only basic skills are discussed:
PERSONAL SKILLS. As indicated by the name Personal skill is something related to yourself. It is the development of your abilities, your strengths, and your talent. It also includes overcoming your fears and weaknesses. When you are making effort to improve yourself you are practicing personal development. The more you are strong internally, the more strong you appear outside. Personal skills play an important role in developing a personality. You can become the possible best version of yourself. No person can say he/she mastered a personal skill, no matter how much perfect you are there will be always room for improvement. This is one of those things which has positive consequences only. The process of gaining personal skills is continuous and it required lifelong dedication. Personal skills are not only helpful in personal life but are also helpful in professional life. It helps you to be more ecstatic and satisfied. You will have more time and energy to deal with daily tasks. Personal skills are required to ace in every field of life. Most highlighted personal skills are:
- Public speaking
- Time management
- Leadership
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Communication
- Creativity
- Self-motivation
- Persuasion
- Emotional intelligence
- Problem-solving
- Critical thinking
- Collaboration
- Team player
- Guts
- Empathy
- Receiving feedback
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS. Interpersonal skills are your skills to interact with others. These are the essential skills involved in dealing with and relating to other people, largely on a one-to-one basis. These skills are becoming more and more a necessity in the current era of development. It leads to creating an amiable environment around you. As with any human skills, interpersonal skills can be improved with conscious efforts. Interpersonal skills help in maintaining healthy social relationships and teach how to work effectively and get more results through social links. A person with good interpersonal skills is less likely to get into disputes and lacking these skills results in disadvantages like poor working skills and poor group involvement. The main goal of achieving interpersonal skills is maintaining a healthy relationship with your colleagues to perform better in teamwork. It helps in maintaining a healthy personal relationship with people at the place of your work. This skill should be mastered by everyone who wants to stand apart in their business skills. A person with no social connection hard to build an empire but having connections you can divide these tasks and it takes less time to complete tasks.
- Active listening
- Responsibility
- Dependability
- Reliability
- Positivity
- Negotiation
- Leadership
- Caring
- Decision-making skills
- Self-awareness
- Patience
- Collaborative skills
- Influencing
- Honesty
- Ability to work under pressure
LEADERSHIP SKILLS. It has roles in career development and is defined as the skills required to encourage and push your employees by inspiring them the achievement of goals. If you have mastered the skill in your respective field and lack leadership skills you cannot move forward in your career that is why this is also called soft skills. The First step is to recognize your current situation and what modifications exactly you want. Then you will find ways and start practicing them. The main motto of a leader is to get the work done by maintaining a healthy relationship with the employees. A leader scrutinizes the situation and can make instant decisions that will prove beneficial for the team later. He sets up an environment in which his employees work the best in harmony and cooperation. Apart from these skills, there are other skills that itself adopted by the leader like positivity and motivation. Other skills that are fallen under this are:
- Planning
- Changing management
- Management of teams
- Integrity
- Accept criticism
- Strong organization skills
- Committed
- Trustworthy
- Be open to new ideas
- Encourage and motivate your team members
- Productive
- Be passionate
- Mentorship
- Recognize the passion
- Visionary
- Creative
- Delegation
LEARNING SKILLS. It is the term that is defined as the skills required in the process of learning new content and remembering already present content. It is a skill that is being learned and used throughout life. These skills are required continuously to learn new things on daily basis. These skills are most often used in workplaces to stay focused and enhance productivity. Your learning ability helps you to communicate more effectively. It also improves communication. If you listen and grasp every piece of information you can respond more effectively. Good learning behavior is essential to accumulate new information. A growth mindset is also essential for learning. The pivot rule of learning is to open your conscious mind to get the information into it and then transfer of information into the subconscious mind. In the process of learning, you should be curious at every point, clearing your doubts is also necessary. Learning skills happen on a personal level and by keeping this in mind you should know your efforts will also be personal. Goal setting plays an important role in setup your direction and the route should be shiftable according to your goals.
- Study skills
- Researching skills
- Mindmaps making skills
- Planning and organization
- Brains and memory
- Learning styles
- Learning attributes
- Effective listening
- Emotional literacy(EQ)
- Mindfulness
- Thinking skills
- Exams techniques
- Writing skills
PRESENTATION SKILLS. Presentation skills themselves include several skills in it like having a dialogue with the audience, understanding the audience, conveying the messages, and spreading awareness. In today’s world, Presentation skills play an important role in success. It is also a soft skill. It includes the way of speaking, the pitch of voice, proper use of words, non-verbal language, and smoothness. It is the formal way to share your ideas, information, and thoughts with your teammates. It alleviates miscommunication, this means more effective work is done by your teammates. It evolves a person’s mindset and adds up more to their ideas by listening to other people’s opinions. You become more clear with your words and can convey them to others with confidence. It also builds confidence. A successful presentation has been conveyed smoothly, your message is successfully understood by the audience. There are several phases of presentation, most of the presenters do not complete their steps which makes them bad presenters are connecting themselves with an audience, conveying a message, asking them to share their opinion with you, and lastly asking questions to get the information lock. Ask your audience to share opinions is an important step in this way you will end up with the least complexity and confusion
- Research method
- Body language
- Preparing yourself
- Confidence
- Eye contact
- Persuasion
- Making impression on the audience
- Encouraging audience
- Inspiring audience
- Arouse interest in the audience
STUDENT SKILLS. Some skills must be learned early age, student skills are surrounded by such skills these skills can be both personal and Interpersonal. These skills are required for your safe future. Your habits decide your future and allow you to set directions for yourself. Habits can be best developed at this phase. One should recognize their weak areas and start working on them. This is the phase when you have a lot of time and the best time to organize your life. If you fail in any area where you are improving, you have still a lot of time to restart your life. Start early, start small rule works best here. If you are a student it is the best time for you to find directions and evolve your mindset. Some important student skills are:
- Responsibility
- Valuing your time
- Start eating healthy
- Organizing your life
- Communication skills
- Time management
- Creativity
- Productivity
- Working independently
- Maintaining a good social group
- Networking
- Side hustle
- Finding you passion
WRITING SKILLS. Writing includes sharing your ideas and information in a systemized manner. Writing also has some rules to be followed to make it effective it is not as easier as it seems to be. There are a lot of ways to improve writing skills like writing on daily basis about the topic you want to be mastered, you can also get feedback from peers or experts, and reading will also help you in writing as it will widen your vision and thinking capacity. Several aspects should be in mind while writing and these aspects can vary depending upon the type of writing, it can be an email for marketing purposes, replying to a proposal, an email for request, also and informal writing. For formal writing, proper criteria should be followed and they are layout specific, it should be grammatically accurate, try writing short sentences to make your message precise. The important factors are:
- Correct spelling
- Correct grammar
- Correct punctuation
- Properly edited
- Proper use of vocabulary
- Proper use of sentence type
- Using small sentences
- Dividing it into paragraphs
- Purpose of Writing
- Analysis of writing skills
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS. It means the use of your income in the best possible manner to save your money and manage all the expenses at the same time. A person should be cleared of the fact that making more money and spending money wisely are two different aspects of finance. A person with a making more money mindset can never get financially free. If you increase your income at the same time you will increase your expenses and it will be of no use instead start managing your money in a manner to plan your expenses. There are several things you should keep in mind like understanding your current financial situation and planning your expenses according to your situation, analyzing your compulsory expenses, and paying them as soon as you get your income, saving 30 percent of your income and it can also alter according to your income. In the end, go for some of the plans you want to accomplish this month like shopping for your favorite pair of shoes. Your attitude plays important role in managing your finance, being committed is an important step, and avoid distractions so you don’t get off track. Have a journal for your finance management, in that way you can manage expenses properly and also have a record of your expenses.
- Know your wants and needs
- Start saving
- Commit to your plans
- Maintain your expenses
- Setting a money goal
- Mastering the skill of minimizing expenses
PARENTING SKILLS. Half of the generational problems will be solved if parenting skill is mastered. Parenting is a lot more than raising a child and fulfilling expenses. A successful person can be made with the help of supportive parents. A child’s behavior, attitude, life goals, achievement, and whether he is going to be an extrovert or introvert ate based on how a child is treated by his parents. A child who has discovered himself at an early age has a better vision to know what to do in his life. Start by creating a healthy bond with your kid, this step takes most of the time. After that, you can set boundaries for them by making sure for them that you care for them and there are no restrictions, make your kid comfortable enough that they can share everything with you, and give them space by telling them the pros and cons to make their important decisions on their own.
- Become friendly with your child
- Set approachable boundaries
- Give them importance
- Allow them to speak to boast their confidence
- Never suppress them
- Avoid abusing in public
- Accepting the fact that you can also be wrong sometimes
CONCLUSION:
Concluding, it is important to know that to attain basic life skills mere knowledge is not enough but the application of your knowledge in a systemized manner is essential to get the most out of your life. Remember consistency is the key to getting your desired results. With life skills, you will have a leader to your opportunities and can climb up to your goal.