Life is much beyond academics. When most of us are busy cramming books and articles, spending nights completing academic syllabus, are tangled up in the education system, we forget to practice the most important skills necessary for living a better life – Life Skills Education.

Life skills are extremely crucial skills that make our lives much better. But the bitter truth is that most of the students fail to recognize how important these skills are for them. Most of them don’t even know what Life Skills mean and what the field comprises of.

The article is all about life skills, their meaning, and their importance.

Life Skills – what they are

Life is challenging. These challenges are unpredictable and can become an obstacle at any point in time.

Life Skills Education (LS) are essential skills and techniques that enable people to adapt and face the challenges and hardships of life. These skills range from the most basic to advanced skills one needs to survive in this challenging world.

What does Life Skills education encompass?

Life Skills Education is a bunch of 8 important skills one requires at every stage of life in some form or the other. The following are the basic life skills that everyone needs to know.

• Empathy: The skill of empathy teaches to take care of the feeling and desires of others. Life isn’t the same for everyone and thus, empathy teaches us to accept others the way they are.
• Self-awareness: One should be well aware of his/her strengths & weaknesses, desires, goals, ambitions, interests, etc.
• Decision-making skills: LSE teaches to make evaluate the situation to make the decision rather than deciding hastily.
• Critical thinking: The skill teaches to evaluate all the social and personal aspects of a situation objectively before making a decision. For eg. Peer pressure, moral values, etc.
• Stress management: One should believe in himself and not give heed to wasteful beliefs. He/she should be completely aware of the things he/she is doing and have a belief that he/she can achieve it.
• Creative thinking: Creative thinking involves creating new and unique ideas and using them to build further ideas. These creations are a sign of a healthy mind.
• Managing personal relationships: Maintaining happiness and warmth in personal relationships helps the person to stay happy and maintain proper mental health.
• Interpersonal skills: One should try to enhance the interpersonal skills, which comprises of both verbal and non-verbal skills.

How to develop skills and knowledge

Knowing “how to develop skills and knowledge” is extremely important to survive in a challenging world. The process begins with assessing the existing skills. The next step is to develop new skills and polishing existing ones with training, practice, and feedback.

Try to make a skill your hobby and it’ll begin to seem like a doodle.

The final words

Embedding life skills in the curriculum will help in fostering the growth and development of the students. The skills are of utmost importance in surviving in this world and thus, we should try to make LSE an important component of our day to day lives.