LIFE SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Definition of Life skills

A skill is a learned ability. Life Skills are those competencies that assist people in functioning well in the environments in which they live. Life skills have been defined by the World Health Organisation as “the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life”. UNICEF defines life skills as “a behavior change or behavior development approach designed to address a balance of three areas: knowledge, attitude and skills”.

Life skills include psycho social abilities and interpersonal skills that help people take decisions, solve problems, think critically, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with the stress and strain of life in a healthy and productive manner. Essentially, there are two kinds of skills - those related to thinking called "thinking skills" and skills related to dealing with others called "social skills". While thinking skills relate to the personal level, social skills include interpersonal skills. It is the combination of these two types of skills that are needed for achieving assertive behavior and negotiating effectively.

Components of life skills

The Ten core Life Skills as laid down by WHO are:

1. Self-awareness

2. Empathy

3. Critical thinking

4. Creative thinking

5. Decision making

6. Problem Solving

7. Effective communication

8. Interpersonal relationship

9. Coping with stress

10. Coping with emotion

Self-awareness includes recognition of ‘self’and identifying our strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. Developing self-awareness can help us to recognise when we are stressed or under pressure. It is often a prerequisite to effective communication and interpersonal relations, as well as for developing empathy with others.

Empathy is the ability to imagine what life is like for another person. To have a successful relationship with our loved ones and society at large, we need to understand and care about other peoples’ needs, desires and feelings. Without empathy, our communication with others will amount to one-way traffic.

Critical thinking is an ability to analyze information and experiences in an objective manner. Critical thinking helps us to recognize and assess the factors that influence attitudes and behavior.

Creative thinking is a novel way of seeing or doing things that generates new ideas, has a shifting perspective conceives something new and builds on other ideas.

Decision making helps us to take appropriate decisions about our lives. It can teach people how to actively make decisions and what effects these different decisions are likely to have.

Problem solving helps us to deal constructively with problems in our lives.

Interpersonal relationship skills help us to establish a rapport with the people whom we interact with. This includes being able to make and keep friendly relationships, maintain good relations with family members, and also being able to end relationships constructively.

Effective communication means that we are able to express ourselves, both verbally and non-verbally, so that our ideas are effectively transmitted to others.

Coping with stress means recognizing the sources of stress in our lives, recognizing how this affects us, and acting in ways that help us control our levels of stress, by changing our environment or lifestyle and learning how to relax.

Coping with emotions means involving recognizing emotions within us and others, being aware of how emotions influence behavior and being able to respond to emotions appropriately.

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