How To Develop Life Skills ?

Dr. Purushothaman
August 12, 2013

Every human is gifted with talents innumerable. We can otherwise call it as inborn talents. But what if we want an extra talent very badly? We may then learn one, work on it and develop it. Such a learned ability is called a Skill.

Those abilities which help us in living successfully or perform well in respective areas are called Life Skills. To master any skill, all you need is understanding and learn it properly, practice it regularly, perform it, make mistakes, understand the mistakes, correct it, then try again and again until you master.

As humans, we want to live our lives the way we want to live, though things do not work well according to us. If we have the opportunities, we lack skills; if we have skills, we lack experience; if we have both skill and opportunity, we lack qualification. We cannot miss an opportunity on the basis of lack of skills. To make our lives productive and stand apart from the regular lives of other people, we have to think different. We have to work on our skills-those which we possess and those which we do not.

Accomplishing in life is not an easy task, as it puts the full potential of our skills to the work we do. In short, any skill used has to be used to its maximum. We cannot achieve anything with unpolished skills. Another plus point of having skills in life is that it helps you to tackle a problem or situation with more perfection.

To better your skills, you need to:

• Know yourself more. Find out the real you. Hunt out your talents and skills. Make them your strength.
• Have a soft corner for yourself. It is not easy for a person to succeed unless you tend to like yourself. Before loving anyone else, ask yourself the question “Do I Love myself?” If no, then you are a big failure in life.
• Be open-minded. Open-mindedness will help you to be more receptive to new things in life. Be ready to receive new knowledge, new experiences, new people and new opportunities.
• Accept your negatives. Every human being has positive as well as negative sides. If a person is wise, then he would definitely try to understand what his negativities are, and will work on it to turn it to positive ones. If a person is a bad orator, he has to realize that fact. Next step to be done is to work on the underdeveloped skill. Work on till you perfect.
• Fight against shyness. Shyness is considered as a negative factor which keeps us performing perfectly. The worst enemy of any person is shyness. This is a factor which pulls us away from being successful. It can be thus considered as a personality defect. All we have to do is to develop our skills, which will help in decreasing our shyness.
• Develop your social skills. Work on your verbal and non-verbal communication skills. Verbal skills include speaking skills, while non-verbal communication skills include the use of body language, gestures, eye contact with the person whom you want to communicate and giving a pleasant expression to your face while listening or speaking to the next person. Development of social skills cannot be gained all of a sudden. You need to concentrate on perfecting them one at a time. Be patient and work on them very sincerely.
• Adapt leadership qualities. To obtain a high position in your office, you need to develop leadership qualities. Be bold enough to speak up in a group. Take initiatives in giving ideas while working in a team. Give out your opinions without any fail.
• Take complete responsibility of your mistakes. Admit them. Never cover them. Show others that you are bold enough to point out your mistakes. Your faults are your faults and not that of others. Avoid blaming others if you know that something has gone wrong because of your fault.
• Respond after checking the opinions of others. Listen patiently and then respond.

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