World Health Organisation defines Life Skills as “the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable humans to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life.” Another name for this idea is “psychosocial competency,” since these reflecting skills constitute the psycho-social skills influencing valued conduct.
Life Skills Specification
A set of fundamental skills acquired through education and/or direct life experience that enable individuals and groups to properly handle common issues and problems encountered in daily life is called Life Skills.
Importance of Life Skills in Daily life
As young people negotiate life’s problems, Life Skills are vital qualities that improve mental well-being and competency. Development specialists generally agree that these abilities are important, and they are frequently used in settings connected to social concerns and health. Furthermore encompassing fields including consumer education, environmental education, peace education, and education for development, livelihood, and income generating are life skills. Basically, life skills provide young people the means to be proactive in preserving their well-being, promoting health, and strengthening good social ties.
Essential life Skills
The ten basic abilities advised by World Health Organization (WHO) are crucial for everyone to overcome obstacles and keep mental balance. These are the basics
Problem Solving:
The person should be knowledgeable about the nature of the problem, its starting point, element aggravating the problem, and several remedies. It enables us to handle challenges in our daily life effectively. Not resolved significant issues can lead to mental stress and related physical strain.
Decision Making:
Making decisions enables us to properly handle choices concerning our life. One must consider the advantages and disadvantages, loss and gain, the risk involved before deciding. One should not hesitate to see the relevant persons.
Creative Thought:
Characteristically of four components—fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration—thinking is a fresh approach of seeing or doing things. One should be creative and imaginative, so investigate fresh ideas and approaches.
Critical Thinking:
It is the capacity to approach knowledge and events objectively. By enabling us to identify and evaluate the elements influencing attitudes and behavior, such values, peer pressure, and the media, critical thinking can support health. One has to learn to assess and scrutinize an issue, knowledge situation, demand, or advice given by others.
Self Awareness:
Self-awareness is the awareness of “self,” our character, our strengths and shortcomings, wishes and hates. Along with establishing empathy with others, it is usually a precondition for good communication and personal relationships. One should be in appropriate self-esteem. Both inferiority and superiority emotions about self are detrimental.
Empathy:
is the capacity to picture life for another person. Successful relationships with our loved ones depend on our understanding and sympathetic concern for the opinions, experiences, and expressions of other people. It can enable us to embrace others, therefore enhancing social contacts—especially in contexts of ethnic or cultural diversity.
Interpersonal Relationship:
One should learn the ability of establishing and preserving a suitable, amicable rapport with most of the people. This ability enables us to establish and maintain pleasant relationships as well as to relate in positive ways with the individuals we contact with, which can be rather important for our mental and social well-being.
Effective Communication:
Good communication skills—verbal and nonverbal—are absolutely vital for daily living of the individual. We should be able to communicate ourselves in a way fit for our circumstances and culture. Mental health depends on proper communication of emotions and experiences.
Management Of Stress:
The prevention of physical and mental illness depends much on suitable and healthy strategies of stress management. Maintaining both physical and mental health depends on good control of stress. Appropriate and healthy management of stress can greatly lower the risk of several physical diseases like heart disease, hypertension, and decreased immune system development. In a same vein, it can help avoid burnout, anxiety, and depression. Regular physical activity, mindfulness and relaxation exercises, a balanced diet, enough sleep, and joyful and relaxing hobbies or activities could be among the healthy stress-management strategies. Reducing stress also depends critically on social support—from friends, family, or professional counseling.
Management Of Emotions:
Prevention of physical and mental diseases depends much on suitable and healthy strategies of controlling one’s negative emotions. Preventing both physical and mental health problems depends on good emotional management, particularly of negative ones. Unchecked, emotions including anger, sadness, frustration, and worry can cause a variety of problems including chronic stress, depression, anxiety disorders, and even physical diseases including high blood pressure, heart disease, and digestive troubles. Instead of repressing or disregarding one’s feelings, good emotional management is in knowing and understanding them. Negative emotions can be processed and released constructively via mindfulness, deep breathing techniques, writing, and conversations with a friend or therapist. Balancing emotional well-being also comes from participating in leisurely and joyful activities including hobbies, exercise, or time in nature. Further improving emotional control is developing emotional intelligence, knowing one’s emotions and how they influence ideas and conduct.
Conclusion
Training Life Skills could strengthen one and produce traits like self-esteem, sociability and tolerances. Growing up and your habits become permanent make these Life Skills difficult to adjust for. A specific period of time spent in a life-changing event or challenging circumstance will help change this habit; otherwise, seminars or courses will explain the fundamental theory but the person will behave as per his basic instincts inculcated before.
