Life skill

 The WHO has defined life skills 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”. The
UNICEF definition is based on research evidence that suggests that shifts in risk
behavior are unlikely if knowledge, attitudinal and skills based competency are not
addressed.

» Life skills are not something we learn only for the sake of academic life. We rather
develop them for effective functioning in our life. Development of life skills is, therefore,
a lifelong process where one has to update his/her skills and knowledge of dealing with
life events.

» Life skills are essentially those abilities that help promote mental well-being and
competence in young people as they face the realities of life. Most development
professionals agree that life skills are generally applied in the context of health and
social events. They can be utilized in many content areas: prevention of drug use, sexual
violence, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS prevention and suicide prevention. The
definition extends into consumer education, environmental education, peace education
or education for development, livelihood and income generation, among others. In short,
life skills empower young people to take positive action to protect themselves and
promote health and positive social relationships.

COMPONENT OF LIFE SKILL

There are 10 components of life skills these are

 Critical thinking: thinking more effectively within curricular subject areas,

understanding the reasoning employed, assessing independently and appropriately,
and solving problems effectively. It involves, as well, improved thinking skills in dealing
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 with real life problems in assessing information and arguments in social contexts and
making life decisions.
 Self-confidence: is the degree to which one can rely on his/her ability to perform
certain behavior alone or in public. It is individual‘s trust in his or her own abilities,
capacities, and judgments, or belief that he or she can successfully face day-to-day
challenges and demands
 Self-awareness: knowledge and understanding of one‘s strengthens and weaknesses.
Self-awareness involves monitoring our inner worlds, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. It
is important, because it is a major mechanism influencing personal development.
 Self-esteem: the degree to which we perceive ourselves positively or negatively; our
overall attitude toward ourselves, which can be measured explicitly or implicitly.
 Decision-making: Processes involved in combining and integrating available
information to choose, implement and evaluate one out of several possible courses of
actions.
 Interpersonal relationships: the relationships a person have with others persons.
They are social associations, connections, or affiliations between two or more people
having various levels of intimacy and sharing, and implying the discovery or
establishment of common ground.
 Reflective communication: attending communications with thoughtful and due
attention to reflect on one‘s own thinking, behaviors and interaction with others.
 Peer pressure resistance: individual‘s abilities and skills to confront negative
influences from his/her group members.
 Knowing rights and duties: One‘s knowledge and understanding of rights and duties
of individuals, groups, institutions and nations allowed to do or not to do by law and/or
a culture.
 Problem solving: the process of identifying a discrepancy between an actual and
desired state of affairs, difficulties, obstacles and complex issues and then taking action
to resolve the deficiency or take advantage of the opportunity.

The Goals Of Life Skills

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 The goal of knowing and applying life skills is to lead a smooth and successful life at
home, work place and in social relationship. These skills help us live in harmony with
ourselves and others around us, select the goods from the bad, choose gold from soil,
simplify life that is full of troubles otherwise etc. Therefore, you are advised to know,
understand and exercise skills of life.

Self-concept

-It is the mental image one has of oneself and an idea of the self constructed from the
beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others.

As discussed by Gecas (1982) in a document entitled Annual Review of Sociology, the self is
a reflexive phenomenon that develops in social interaction and is based on the social
character of human language. The concept of self provides the philosophical underpinning
for social-psychological inquiries into the self-concept. The "self-concept," on the other
hand, is a product of this reflexive activity. It is the concept the individual has of
himself/herself as a physical, social, and spiritual or moral being.
Self-concept has the following important features:

 It is the totality of ideas that a person holds about the self

 It includes everything the person believes to be true about himself/herself

 It is composed of relatively permanent self-assessments that of course changes over

time with life experiences and relationships

 It is not restricted to the present. It also includes past and future selves

 It is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's perception of "self"

in relation to a number of characteristics, such as academics, gender roles, racial
identity, and many others

 It guides our actions, motivations, expectations and goals for future

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Example My self-concept is growing day by day since I started to mature my self-concept
ideology was negative in the past I have been believing that I can't do anything that I'm a
weak solo boy and after I read a book I have changed differently that book changed me
entirely.

The name of the book is Atomic Habits by James Clear

Self- awareness

 an awareness of one's own personality or individuality.conscious knowledge of

one's own character and feelings.

 Self-awareness is having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths,

weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. It is an attribute of one‘s self
concept that allows understanding other people‘s attitudes and responses to them.High
self-awareness is a solid predictor of good success in life, perhaps because a self-aware
person knows when an opportunity is a good fit for them and how to make an
appropriate enterprise work well. However, most of us are hardly aware of why we
succeed or fail; or why we behave as we do. Our minds are so busy with daily hassles
that we usually self reflect only when something goes awfully wrong. Our response in
challenging situations is often to get defensive, make excuses, or blame another person,
because we do not want to see our part in the disaster. If we can observe ourselves
during such incidents, it will be a good start to self-awareness.
Here are some suggestions to start building self-awareness:
 Practice mindfulness
 Become a good listener
 Become more self-aware
 Open your mind to new perspectives
 Develop self-esteem
 Look at yourself objectively
 Take feedback from others

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  Know your strengths and weaknesses
 Set intentions and goal

Example Nowadays I'm starting to live my days as if it's my last one I started reading more
books and they changed me for instance there is a book that's called The 7 habits of Highly
effective people and it takes about time management Open mindedness knowing your
strength and weaknesses and that makes me realize that I have a weakness and thought me
how to get rid of those weaknesses and also how to changing them into my strength

Self-esteem

 Self-esteem refers to an individual's overall self-evaluation. It is the judgment or

opinion we hold about ourselves. It’s the extent to which we perceive ourselves to
be worthwhile and capable human beings

Example when I am happy my self-esteem gets high

Self-confidence

 Self-confidence is the belief in oneself and abilities, which describes an internal state
made up of what we think and feel about ourselves.

Example I am always on self-confidence whenever I answer questions raised by the

teacher whether I am wrong or not because I always learn from my mistake.

Critical thinking

 Critical thinking is "Purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in

interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the
evidential, conceptual, methodological, contextual considerations upon which
judgment is based .

Critical thinking is also regarded as intellectually engaged, skillful, and responsible

thinking that facilitates good judgment because it requires the application of
assumptions, knowledge, competence, and the ability to challenge one's own thinking.

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 Critical thinking requires the use of self-correction and monitoring to judge the
rationality of thinking as well as reflexivity. When using critical thinking, individuals
step back and reflect on the quality of that thinking.

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully

conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered
from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as
a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual
values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency,
relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

Example this life skill helped me to to choose natural science and social science when I was
in grade 11

Anger management

 Anger is a state of emotion where a person is irritated by block of interests, loss of

possession or threats to personality.

When anger is not controlled, conflict becomes worse. Dwelling on how angry you are
doesn’t help to defuse your anger. Instead your anger can build and lead to rage. At this
stage, you may no longer be able to think clearly.

Example i don’t trust my judgment when I am angry so I tend to distance my self from
every one

Creative thinking

 Creative thinking means thinking outside the box. Often, creativity involves lateral
thinking, which is the ability to perceive patterns that are not obvious.

 The ability to connect the seemingly unconnected and meld existing knowledge into
new insight about some element of how the world works

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Creative thinking is the ability to consider something in a new way. Employers in all
industries want employees who can think creatively and bring new perspectives to the
workplace.1

Creative thinking can involve: 

A new approach to a problem

A resolution to a conflict between employees

A new result from a data set

A previously untried approach to earn revenue

A new product—or product feature 

Creative thinking isn't limited to artistic types. Creative thinking is a skill that anyone can
nurture and develop.

Example I use my creative thinking skill to overcome some heavy tasks and I always
succeed for instance last week it was my sisters birthday and me didn’t find any man who
decorate the place after we search for it and we didn’t find any I tried to decorate the place
and the place looks magnificent this all thing happened because I used my creative thinking
skills .

Problem solving

the process of identifying a discrepancy between an actual and desired state of affairs,
difficulties, obstacles and complex issues and then taking action to resolve the deficiency or
take advantage of the opportunity

Example in my life I have faced with many difficult problems that needed deep thinking
and problem solving skills.

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 Decision-making

Decision-making is a selection process where one of two or more possible solutions is

chosen to reach a desired goal. The steps in both problem solving and decision-making are
quite similar. In fact, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably
Example I choose to learn in this university after intensive decision making

Reflective communication

 Reflective communication is an exchange of ideas. It actually highlights, mirrors, and

reflects what somebody is thinking, inferring, understanding, or trying to express

attending communications with thoughtful and due attention to reflect on one‘s own
thinking, behaviors and interaction with others

Example I am trying to prove my reflective communication skill because it will help me to

get along with my neighbors

Coping With Stress

 Stressors are unavoidable. As they are coupled with heart disease, depression, and
lowered immunity, we need to learn to cope with the stress in our lives. There are
two ways of dealing with stress: problem focused and emotion-focused.

Problem focused - when we feel a sense of control over a situation and think we can
change the circumstances or change ourselves, we may address stressors directly, with
problem -focused coping. For example, if our impatience leads to fight our friend, we may
go directly to that friend to work things out.

Emotion-focused - When we cannot handle the problem or believe that we cannot change
a situation, we may turn to emotion-focused coping. If, despite our best efforts, we cannot
get along with that friend, we may reach out to other friends to help address our own
emotional needs.

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Example when I am stressed with school and other things I like to spend my time walking
around and watching the sunset

Resilience

 Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy,
threats or significant sources of stress such as family and relationship problems,
serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing
back" from difficult experiences (APA definition).

Example this is the best trait I usually use it when I get in fight with my families or friends

Emotional intelligence

 Emotional intelligence describes the ability, capacity, skill, or self- perceived ability
to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups.
People who possess a high degree of emotional intelligence know themselves very
well and are also able to sense the emotions of others. They are affable, resilient, and
optimistic.

Individuals have different personalities, wants, needs, and ways of showing their emotions.
In the most generic framework, five domains of emotional intelligence are divided into
personal (self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation) and social (social awareness
and social skills) competences

Example my neighbors emotional intelligence needs to develop because they always

emotionally unstable.

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