What life skills do my children need to learn to live a happier, more fulfilling, and successful life? This is a question that I asked myself while thinking about what my children need to learn. I started by looking for what exactly the definition of life skills is, and this is what I found on Wikipedia:
“Life skills are behaviors used appropriately and responsibly in the management of personal affairs. They are a set of human skills acquired via teaching or direct experience that are used to handle problems and questions commonly encountered in daily human life.”
It wasn’t that easy to find the answer for my question as I found many, so I decided to start by checking what skills I found out, when I grew up, that I needed to learn and could make a difference in my life if I learned them earlier.
I thought about how to highlight the importance of these skills to my kids or how to tell them to start building these skills. I came up with the idea of presenting them in the form of a list of tips to apply in their daily lives to make them a habit:
- Work hard and Play hard: Work hard when it is work time; and play hard when it is fun time.
- Listen: Listen attentively to your heart, your mind and to others to understand what they really want to tell you.
- Ask questions: Be curious and ask questions to understand and check with others about what they want to say and if it you understood right.
- Follow your passion: Find out what your passion is, what you love, and what you do effortlessly and do it.
- Learn to solve problems: Problems are essential in life, so learn to find solutions for the problems not to avoid them.
- Be courageous and face fears: Do not avoid what you don’t like because of fear of failure, it is your opportunity to learn something new and strengthen your will power muscle. Take a small risk every day by trying something new.
- Do make mistakes: Do not be ashamed of making mistakes. We all do, and it’s a must for learning.
- Let go of criticism: Don’t let criticism negatively affect your life. Sometimes people criticize others just to feel good about themselves so find out why they are criticizing you. Are they really caring about you? If yes, consider it; otherwise let it go.
- Learn: Life is a long learning journey, so never stop learning and developing yourself. Commit yourself to learn something new every day.
- Be goal-oriented: Learn to set goals and work toward these goals; it is very powerful as it allows you to live a purposeful life.
- Work in a team: Cooperate and help others. Working in a team allows you to build new skills like good communication skills, leadership skills and unselfishness.
- Be grateful: Focus your attention on who you are and what you have, not what is missing in your life, and be grateful for what you have in hands.
- Learn to manage your resources wisely: Be careful about your health, your money and your time. They are your most important and precious resources so don’t waste them.
- Give amply: generosity in giving and sharing everything like material stuff, emotions, praise, encouragement and love can bring a lot of happiness and fulfillment; as it allows you to win other’s love and respect.
- Dream big: Don’t fear to dream big dreams and to follow your dream. Just believe in yourself and in your ability to achieve your dream.
- Believe in yourself: Be confident and believe that you can do it.
- Never give up: Persistence is key factor for success. “Winners never quit and quitters never win” ~Vince Lombardi
These are the skills which are essential, from my point of view, for my kids to acquire. What other skills do you think your kids need to learn to live a fulfilling and successful life?
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Nihad from Alexandria, Egypt. Nihad blogs at Aurora Beams Life Coaching.
Image courtesy of “Girl Writing Abc Shows Kid Learning” by Stuart Miles FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Wonderful wonderful list, Nihad!
I think you’ve covered a lot of the things and even more life skills that I wish my son will have.
Wow, Nihad, never mind your kids … your list has many things on it that I have yet to get right myself!!
The only thing I’d add is “trust your instincts” – we all, instinctively, know the right thing to do!
EVERY TIME I’ve allowed my “head” (reason) and / or “heart” (emotion) to override my “gut” (instinct) I’ve found myself in trouble! Also, as a young mother, I wish I’d been told to trust MYSELF when it came to caring for my baby, instead of being given too much conflicting “advice” and being made to feel incapable.
Nihad, this is an awesome list and I do need to work on some of them myself. I would like to add one: Failure is NOT a reflection of your capabilities. It just means whatever you tried didn’t work for you, so go out and find what works.
Very well thought out list, Nihad. And I agree, a list good for both, me and the children!
I love the “always be learning” and “dream big.”
I would add, “don’t be afraid to put yourself in others’ shoes sometimes in order to understand them.”
Great list!
Jen 🙂
Great list!
My favourite: don’t be afraid to make mistakes; so important.
In our increasingly goal-oriented world, I think helping our children (and ourselves) know that everyone makes mistakes — and that not everyone wins all the time (no, not everyone needs a medal!)– are incredibly important. It’s from failure that we learn resilience, reflection, empathy. Great list and really good advice!
I like Listen! I am always reminding myself to slow down when I talk to people…really focus and be attentive, rather than scanning the room for other people or thinking about when it will be my chance to talk again! My father always said…if you do all the talking, you never learn anything new.
Great list Nihad! I would add love completely. Do you know the saying its better to have love and lost than never to have loved at all? If you don’t love others with all of your heart you will be missing out. 🙂
Love your list of reminders Nihad and would add “be kind.” Also reminds me of a quote about the best lessons in life being learnt in pre-school, like .. Share your toys, take your turn, wash your hands, …
Lots of important tips for everyone. I think the best way to teach our kids the things on that list is to live those things. After all kids learn by example.
I would add that kids need to learn that the world is not black and white. They need to learn to give people the benefit of the doubt because until they walk in the other person’s shoes they don’t know the other person’s challenge.