Why life skills? What are life skills, anyway? Why learn or practice life skills?
A definition of life skills can be about as simple or as complicated as we wish to make it. Here are a few:
- Skills you need to make the most out of life
- Any skill that is useful for your life
- Skills that helps a person to function well in adult life, especially in social or emotional situations
- Skills for adaptive, positive behavior that help us to deal effectively with life’s demands and challenges
- Psychosocial competency
- Skills that allow a person to release fears, anger, and stress
Some organizations have set about to list the essential or most important life skills.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the following core areas of cross-cultural life skills. These skills help us develop and use healthy behaviors and avoid behaviors that are health risks:
- decision-making and problem-solving
- creative thinking and critical thinking
- communication and interpersonal skills
- self-awareness and empathy
- coping with emotions and stress
BigThink.com lists Seven Essential Life Skills:
- Focus and self-control
- Perspective taking
- Communicating
- Making connections
- Critical thinking
- Taking on challenges
- Self-directed learning
And lastly, Dr. Travis Bradberry’s Nine skills you should learn that pay off forever. According to Dr. Bradberry, the act of learning is every bit as important as what you learn, and these skills, besides helping us in the present, also promote life-long learning:
- Emotional intelligence
- Time Management
- Listening
- Saying no
- Asking for help
- Getting high-quality sleep
- Knowing when to shut up
- Taking Initiative
- Staying positive (overcoming the brain’s tendency to focus on threats)
It is not hard to see the common threads in these lists and definitions of Life Skills: awareness of ourselves and others, problem-solving, self-direction, communication, and behaviors that promote good physical, emotional, and mental health. Learning Life Skills can help us reap big dividends of healthiness and happiness!
Join us as we explore a new life skill each week!