The World Health Organization defines life skills as the adaptive behavior that helps a person to deal the challenges, and demands of the daily life effectively. According to UNICEF, life skills is a change in behavior, or development of behavior to seek balance in three areas, as knowledge, skills, and attitude.
Practicing these skills help in developing sociability, tolerance, self-esteem, and competencies in yourself so that you can take the necessary action at the right time. Let us understand more about life skills.
Who needs to learn life skills?
Whether you are a child, or adult, life skills are beneficial for everyone. Every person who wants to excel in their career, and enhance the quality of life should learn these skills. It is different from bookish knowledge.
These are the practical skills that are useful in day to day life. The right time is to start it from the school age. It should be imparted to students along with their education. This way not just the student excels at academic levels, but also makes remarkable growth at personal levels.
It represents “reflective skills” that includes analyzing, and problem-solving skills, “personal skills” that includes interpersonal skills, and self-awareness skills.
What skills comes under life skills?
Life skills cover several areas that impacts the quality of life of a person. There is a close association between life quality, and acquisition of life skills. When a person becomes skillful in all these areas, then his independent functioning, life quality, and social competence also increases.
According to the World Health Organization, life skills are classified into following areas:
- Thinking Skills:
- Self-awareness,
- Problem solving,
- Critical thinking,
- Creative thinking, and
- Decision making
These skills are very important for a person to understand problems, identify solutions for them either or with the assistance of others. Once you arrive at the solution, you need to take the necessary action to effectively address them.
A person learns to develop critical thinking abilities. He thinks in an unusual and different manner about the issues, come up with new solutions, or ideas, and couple it with the ability to evaluate information judiciously and comprehend its significance.
Social Skills:
- Interpersonal relationships
- Effective Communication, and
- Empathy
In this section, a person learns skills to work with other people. He learns the ways to effectively communicate with others either verbally, or in writing or both. It makes a person becomes more aware of himself. He starts to become emphatic and see life from other’s point of view to deal with them in a better way.
Emotional Skills:
These are the skills that helps in dealing with the stress. By learning these skills, you will feel in charge of your emotions. It helps to learn how to practice self-control. These skills teach how to stand up for not just himself, but also for others, and remain calm even when faced with criticism, or provocation. Life skills teach people to take setbacks positively and take it as an opportunity to learn from them and not get disappointed.
How does life skills prove to be advantageous to a person?
These skills help a person live a fulfilling life. It makes a person feel confident and motivated. By learning these skills, you feel more positive, and happy and you radiate the same all around you. These skills can be acquired either by direct experience or through teaching and assisting them to deal with challenging situations in life.
Life skills are important for the overall well-being of the person. It teaches a person how to manage and live better quality of life. An individual learns to live life to fullest by conquering his inhibitions and fears, and realize their ambitions. He becomes better at making decisions in life.
Students when learn these skills, become more self-assured, effective communicators, and independent thinkers. Not just they become good listeners, and speakers but also develop a positive outlook.
Life skills teach you how to overcome your shortcomings that obstructs you from achieving your goals. It could be the fear of talking to the strangers, going to a new place, performing any activity for the first time, or anything else. By learning these skills, you start to accept yourself and live life with happiness.
Also read: Importance of work-life balance
As a part of life skills training, a student sees several motivational videos, and audios that teaches him how to overcome challenges in life. The real-life scenarios make a student feel motivated and more goal oriented. This enables the student to face every challenge in their life with courage. It teaches them to become more self-reliant, and independent.