Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enables individual to deal effectively with stressful situations.
Few such skills are as follows:
(i) Assertiveness:
• It helps to communicate, clearly and confidently, our feelings, needs, wants and thoughts.
• It is ability of an individual to say ‘no’ to a request which is against his wishes.
• If one is assertive then he or she feels confident high self-esteem and maintains his/her identity.
(ii) Time Management:
• Learning time management determines quality of life.
• It is setting the priorities, goals and values in life.
Each day making list of things one wants to accomplish:
• Arranging work schedule.
• Changing perception of time.
• Setting aside time in schedule for exercise and leisure activities
• Learning to plan time.
(iii) Rational Thinking:
• It is challenging the distorted thinking and irrational beliefs.
• Deriving the anxiety provoking thoughts.
• Making positive statements.
• It is learning to ignore negative thoughts and images.
(iv) Improving Relationship: It consists following essential skills: ,
(a) Listening to what the other person is saying.
(b) Expressing what one feels and thinks.
(c) Accepting the other person’s opinions and feelings, even if they are different from your own.
(d) Avoiding jealously and sulking behaviour.
(v) Self-care: Healthy mind in healthy body.
• Learning right pattern of breathing i.e., relaxed, slow, stomach-centered breathing from diaphragm.
• Avoiding environmental stress like pollutions, because it affects our mood.
(vi) Overcoming Unhelpful Habits: Perfectionism, avoidance, procrastination and our strategies which provides short-term gain but makes the individual vulnerable to stress. Perfectionists want to get everything just as they want which is not always possible. Avoidance is ignoring the issue and refusal to face it or accept it.Procrastination means putting off what we know we need to do, i.e., postponing the things like ‘I will do it later’ just to avoid confrontation due to the fear of failure.
