Essential Life Skills That Everyone Needs…and why do you need them in your life?
Living life real, socially, emotionally, and spiritually with awareness, balance, and authenticity should be every adult’s life plan. Why? One most important answers are to teach our children what it takes to make it in a world that is often very confusing, disruptive, and lacking in stability.
To be honest, everyone knows that life is not always peace and harmony as they say. Sometimes challenging, sometimes scary, often confusing, and other times we are misled and disappointed. One must have life skills within their reach to survive those things that sometimes occur without a moment’s notice.
Life Skills are what all humans need to live life with more consciousness, awareness, and clarity. Without seeing the need for authentic life skills, we can fail ourselves as well as others. Especially our children whom we are hoping in some cases have a more efficient, and less problematic lifestyle.
Essential Life Skills That Everyone Needs Description
The World Health Organization has defined life skills as, “the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life” *See it here
Life skills enable us as humans to deal with life in a positive and clear format.
In essence, with the necessary abilities for adaptive and positive behavior, we can deal effectively with the challenges of life, good or bad. This is sometimes referred to as psychological competency.
Some known life skills are included in the necessary emotional intelligence (EI) skills needed for interpersonal skills and relationships.
Are All Humans Created Equally For Life Skills?
To be perfectly clear all humans are not created equal regarding how we act, perform, endure, accomplish, live, and gain success. Yes, we are all born with a mind, body, and yes, soul.
Re: Transforming The Mind, by Dr. Peter Shephard.
Here is The Passage About the Soul from Dr. Shephard’s book-with permission…
“In psychosynthesis, which Assagioli developed in the 1930s, it is said that a person has a personality and is a soul. However, personalities in the world are obvious to us all; souls are only present for those with eyes to see. Assagioli’s view of synthesis is of becoming more and more aware of soul, not only in oneself but also in others.
His view, and the view of most spiritual disciplines, is that soul is basic and enduring, and that personality, though necessary for being in the world , is relatively superficial and changeable.
The soul is the context, the home, the ‘unmoved mover’, the uncreated source of life; the personality is full of content, learned responses, and is dynamic. The soul may in many people never be recognized in any explicit way, and the nature of this barrier and how to remove it, to become ‘enlightened or to ‘awaken’, is studied in the book.”
What Are Psychological Skills?
- Interpersonal Relationships -are often referred to as getting hired skills, especially in leadership. These skills include the following:
- Communication
- Problem-Solving
- Critical Thinking Skills
- Conflict Management
- Empathy
- Active Listening
- Positive Attitude
- Leadership
- Team Work
- negotiation and more
- Emotional Skills and/or Social Skills –
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is defined as a set of competencies demonstrating the ability one has to recognize his or her behaviors, moods, and impulses, and to manage them best according to the situation. The ability to see one’s own emotions, understand what they are telling you, and realize how your emotions affect people around you. It is also your perception of others; understanding how they feel gives you the power to manage relationships more effectively.
- Social Skills- How people communicate with other individuals effectively. This includes verbal, non-verbal, written, and visual communication. Social skills can be learned, developed, or strengthened.
- Creative Skills- employers are now more concerned with their leaders having creative abilities than with a high IQ. Creative skills or Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary work, or a painting). re: Wikipedia.
- Empathy- is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.[1] Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others (and others’ emotions in particular). Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy. re: Wikipedia.
- Self-awareness- is the ability to see and understand yourself as a person, your actions, your beliefs, your values, emotions, and thoughts. re: Very Well Minded
- Coping *Stress-Related Skills – the ability to evaluate, understand, and live through the challenges of life that are extremely difficult.
and more…
How Do These Life Skills Pertain To Living Life Positively
Let’s step back a moment and remember as stated, that all humans are not created equal as far as social and emotional skills.
Emotionally Stable – emotional intelligence: Many people function in life by being low-key, never getting highly emotional about anything. Yet you have the next person who gets bent out of shape over the fly swarming across their desk and turns over their coffee cup in the process.
The individual who is emotionally stable knows how to deal with stress-related issues at home, work, and play. They are calm, focused, and very self-aware. They are fields with empathy, problem-solving abilities, and know-how to keep problems from turning into a disaster.
These individuals make great leaders because they are people who can put their own needs aside to keep a company profitable. They know how to work with other people to give them confidence which means they are not the boss, but the leader.
Communication Skills – Often communication must be learned, or made into a better skill. We all communicate, however, some are better at it than others. In communication, one must be able to listen to other people speaking, get the full meaning of the words spoken to them, and then communicate back with the right answers. Listening skills are often more important than speaking.
To listen well, one must be able to focus not only on what the person is saying but what the person might be implying but cannot communicate verbally. Meaning, that very often one’s action may speak volumes. If they are not focused on what the individual is saying, and their actions; they cannot ask questions to get the clarity needed to give an answer.
Critical Thinking – **see above also –this is the ability to intellectually analyze, apply knowledge/experience, and reasoning to evaluate a situation, or a problem, and form a judgment about the issues, while…
Problem-solving- A problem solver is a person who can identify the problem, speculate how to resolve it, and proceed to either do it themselves or give instructions to someone else, without playing the blame game. In short, it is not how it happened in many circumstances, it is how it is resolved.
Interpersonal Skills- interpersonal skills include empathy, emotional intelligence, listening, communication, teamwork, motivation, and the ability to resolve conflict.
EndNote
Life skills are necessary for living a good life with a peaceful existence. Without life skills, it would be impossible to exist in a world of chaos as it is today. One must know when to speak when to listen, when to engage in conversation, and when to walk away.
In leadership one of the most important life skills needed is emotional intelligence. Being in control of your own emotions, having empathy, having the ability to take criticism, and taking responsibility for the team means you are a great leader.
Life in general has many facets that humans must adapt to. For most, these are learned behaviors, that one works on continuously to become someone who leaves a good impression on those around them.
*Permission From Dr. Peter Shepherd
