Importance of Life Skills Education -10 Essential Life Skills Everyone Should Learn

What are life skills in psychology and what is the importance of life skills development?

Life skills are defined as a set of psychosocial competence and personal skills that help people make careful big decisions, communicate effectively with others, develop coping skills with surrounding circumstances, and manage oneself which leads to progress and success. Necessary life skills vary by a person's age and by culture and society. 

Life skills education is an invaluable asset that can help young students overcome the challenges of everyday life, so schools must provide their students with practical lessons in everyday life. Let's take a look at the top 10 essential life skills everyone should learn. 

Essential life skills everyone should learn

Importance of Life Skills Education in Preparing for a Better Future

What are Life Skills?

Life skills can be defined by several definitions, including:

Life skills are defined as the capabilities that enable individuals to take adaptive and positive behavior that makes them able to deal with the events and challenges of everyday life and to participate in the modern world full of new challenges and handle everything from interactions with others to identifying and processing emotions. 
This is done through the promotion of positive personal behaviors, social adaptation, citizenship and positive attitudes at work.

Life skills are also defined as the set of personal skills and social features that the individual needs in order to interact confidently and efficiently with themselves or with other people and with the local community and in order to have a high ability to make important decisions in his life, solve problems at all levels of personal, social, sexual and self-development, in order to deal with others positively, and avoid falling into crises, and overcome them when they occur.

Importance of Life Skills Education

The importance of having life skills in a person's life lies in his ability to adapt to all circumstances and succeed in the renaissance and prosperity of society. 

One of the most important problems that demand quick attention and solutions these days is the lack of life skills for the new generation. 
This is because there is a lack of life skills in the output of educational institutions. As a result, many fail in their careers and personal lives due to the absence of these skills they must have.

Life skills education helps students build confidence in both communication and cooperative and collaborative skills, provide them with tools important for development, find new ways of thinking and problem-solving and provide methods on how to socialize, make new friends and recognize the impact of their actions and behaviors. 

Life skills also help students take action in situations where their parents or teachers may not be available and make themselves take responsibility for what they do instead of blaming others.

10 Essential Life Skills Everyone Should Learn

Every life-skill is of great importance that must be taken care of by developing it for the person. The most important life skills may include:

1. Self-Awareness Skills

Self-awareness skill is the ability of the individual to be aware of the emotions that afflict him, identify one's own performance and behavior correctly and respond to various social situations appropriately.

Self-awareness skill also helps a person to know what he feels, as well as understand the behavior and feelings of others and use his knowledge to make successful and sound decisions.

2. Empathy and Sympathy Skills

Empathy skill is the person's ability to accurately put himself in someone else's place - to understand the other's feelings, perceptions, and circumstances from their point of view – and to be able to react appropriately to the situation and to communicate that understanding back to the other person.

Sympathy skill is the person's ability to show a sense of compassion, commiseration or appreciation for another person and to deal with others' emotional reactions.

3. Problem-Solving Skills

Problem-solving skills refer to the individual's ability to identify and define a problem, generate alternative solutions, evaluate and select the best option, implement the selected option and solve problems effectively and timely without any hindrance.

4. Decision-Making Skills

Decision-making skills can be defined as the ability of the individual to identify and pass a specific judgment on a situation he was exposed to and choose alternatives based on the values, beliefs, and preferences after studying the various alternatives to him. 
Every decision-making process provides a final choice, which may or may not indicate action.

Decision-making skills help to develop problem-solving skills in the following ways:

⤇Controlling inner sensations, feelings, behavior, and action, as the individual has the ability to make the right decision.

⤇Making the right decision is a success for oneself and is the product of continuous thinking that has given the individual the ability to make decisions.

⤇Not being influenced by external pressures when making a decision, no matter how great the challenges are and how strong the external impact is. The inner feeling must be full of positivity and belief that opportunities still exist to achieve the goals set.

⤇A person must be clear in decision-making, and he must know what he wants, otherwise, he will not achieve what he seeks.

5. Thinking Skills

Thinking skills are defined as the mental activities of an individual that he uses to process information, make sense of experiences, build relationships, solve problems, make decisions, ask questions, and create new ideas or organize information.

It is worth noting that thinking is not as a description of one thing, but rather the use of existing information about a particular thing to arrive at something else, and this is called innovation.

There are four types of thinking skills, including:

Analytical Thinking Skills: Convergent or analytical thinking is an important component of visual thinking that gives one the ability to break complex problems into single and manageable components and solve problems quickly and effectively.

Divergent Thinking Skills: Divergent thinking refers to a problem-solving method used to generate creative ideas by exploring a variety of possible solutions in order to find one that works.

Divergent thinking usually occurs in a free-flowing, spontaneous, and non-linear fashion. 
Hence, this conflicts with convergent thinking, which depends on focusing on a limited number of solutions rather than proposing multiple solutions.

Creative Thinking Skills: Creative thinking skill is the ability to create something new that makes an individual realize the gaps in the missing elements,  look at things in a new way that has not been previously considered and search for indicators and evidence to fill these gaps and make the necessary adjustments. 
The characteristic of creative thinking is based on imagination, which requires fantastic imaginative abilities far from surrounding reality and far from logical reasoning.

Critical Thinking Skills: Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to believe and what to do. 
Critical thinking skill is the ability to distinguish between truth and fake, opinion and judgment, the ability to engage in independent and reverse thinking and to elicit information, as well as understanding the logical relationship between ideas and knowing logical contradictions and the individual's ability to predict.

6. Communication skills

One of the most important life skills, anyone can develop is the skill of communication in a clear and convincing way in front of others. 

Communication skills are the abilities a person uses when providing and receiving different types of information.

Communication skills reflect many benefits for the person, as he is more comfortable while making ideas, and he is more confident in himself, in addition to attracting people to him.

People who are good at talking to others can be creative in many businesses, specifically those related to selling different products, in addition to being able to present ideas and ideologies and influence others through them. 

Just as effective verbal communication is paramount, the same goes for written communication. In all walks of life, especially in the business world, having proper written communication skills is necessary. If you want to make your write-ups, documents, and messages come out looking natural and readable, there are a lot of online tools that you can take help. For one, you can use a paraphrasing tool for solving readability issues and grammar checkers for removing amateurish grammar/spelling errors.
Communication skills require continuous training like all other life skills.

7. Interpersonal Relationship Skills

Interpersonal skills, or what some refer to as interaction skills, social skills or social competence; are the life skills that a person uses daily to interact and communicate with others, individually and in groups. 
This skill is characterized by the ability to be learned by all people, regardless of their educational levels or their personality differences.

Interpersonal skills include traits like self-confidence, active listening, critical thinking, communication skills, leadership, and delegation.

Some important tips to improve your interpersonal skills include:

⤇Start your day with optimism. You choose to be happy or unhappy, as this is a personal choice.

⤇Convince the soul that today will be better than yesterday. Yesterday is past and over and tomorrow is yet to come. You must occupy your thinking in the day you live, and pass this idea on to the people around you in a good manner.

⤇Familiarize yourself with pronounced words. This is delightful and increases good relations and kindness, no matter how bad a person’s mood is.

⤇Accept the attributes and characteristics of others that they have and avoid criticism and complain again and again about what comes out of them. If possible avoid criticism permanently.

8. Accepting Criticism: A Life Skill

The skill of accepting criticism is the ability of a person to accept constructive criticisms for improvement. 
Accepting criticism is an important skill in a person’s life. It can be difficult for some people to accept criticism from others, but it is important to leave out emotional and sensitive feelings. 
If one accepts criticism and focuses on the reason for the criticism, he can use it to improve himself and change his strategies to become better.

9. Time Management Skills

Time management is one of the most important skills for a person, specifically for those who have a lot of tasks and things to accomplish. 
Care must be taken on the most important step to master this skill, which is a commitment to doing one task at a time, as multitasking leads to a person being distracted and thus wasting time.

10. Stress Management Skills

Stress management skills are defined as the ability that puts one in charge and gives him a sense of control, so it is the ability to control emotions, feelings, and anger toward others.

Psychological pressures are defined as a set of external factors that affect an individual, in whole or in part, or affect the integrity of his personality. 
Stress and fatigue lead to physical weakness in humans, so you must have the ability to relax to get rid of any stress or fatigue you may be exposed to. 

Stress management techniques help boost self-esteem, reduce stress, depression, and anxiety, and improve the overall quality of life. 
Stress management skills are essential for a person to be healthy and strong.

Conclusion

Life skills depend on a large part of our experiences and how we can transfer this experience to our new generations, in order to learn, preach and provide additional information to their knowledge. 
But now we are facing a rapid change boom and a massive revolution in the field of science and technology, which widens the gap between parents and children, especially with regard to learning and transferring experience to them, and achieving the maximum benefit.

It is necessary for parents to experience the pressures faced by children and young people. They should not put additional pressure on them and not be surprised by their behaviors that may not coincide with their values, but rather they must understand the technical development and the modern time in which they live and coexist. 
They should understand the pressures and challenges the children are going through, and seek to find common solutions.

Read Also: Top 5 Life Skills Everyone Must Have