Updated April 27, 2023
Skills to Become Successful in Life – Many organizations have yet to realize the value of continuous employee learning and development programs. Even if this is one of the core factors of sustainability, these organizations forget to value their most important resources.
If you join one of these organizations where learning and development are not being given enough emphasis, what would you do to be at the top of your game? You would not wait for anyone to hand you a training program; rather, you would do it yourself.
You will work on a few life skills with immense value in your life and career.
No matter what career goals you have, if you master these life skills, you, as a professional, will stand out in the crowd and play your top game.
Work on them daily, and you will be able to see the significant difference these life skills make in your dealings with customers, peers, supervisors, or anyone you’re connected with professionally.
Want to know how? Read on. We will talk about 5 specific life skills you need to adopt and master to become successful in life and a rock star in your profession.
At the end of each skill, we will also offer you an action strategy to work on. Don’t skip the strategy. If you’re sincere about developing skills, try the action tip immediately.
Below are the 5 important life skills to become successful in life.
Mindfulness
This is one of the most important life skills to have, which helps you get along with other life skills.
To briefly introduce mindfulness, we would say that mindfulness is being able to focus on everything around you at any moment without being distracted by anything within your mind.
Most people talk about distractions outside. But very few focus on the mind and its ever-trying-to-get-our-attention syndrome. If you are mindful, you will be able to successfully concentrate on everything around you.
Do you think it’s easy to master? Like any other life skill, you need to train yourself to do that.
Here’s how to train your mind to be mindful of everything around you.
This is called the process of going toward having no thought in your mind. First, simply sit where you will not be distracted by external events, sounds, talks, or chatter.
Close the door. And be comfortable. Use a cushion if you need to. Close your eyes and simply concentrate on your breathing. You will see that your mind is trying to distract you with thoughts, ideas, and many other things.
But you keep on sitting and concentrate on breathing. If you can sit for a few minutes, you will see that your mind is getting quieter and quieter.
If you have the urge to get up, keep on sitting when the first urge comes. After some time, a second urge will tempt you; then, keep on sitting. On the third temptation, you can let go and open your eyes.
The method mentioned here is a simple one. It doesn’t even need anything to buy to do the practice. People often complain about building life skills; they don’t know how to do it.
But it’s simple. Just sit, relax, and concentrate on your breathing. Within a year, you will see that you’re much more mindful in your personal and professional life.
Do it now – Take 5 minutes from your schedule today and do this training. Don’t skip this action. You will begin to see how beautiful you feel once you practice mindfulness.
Collaboration with diverse people
The business has become global now. Everything a business does or doesn’t have a global impact, and not only the customers, even the employees, and all internal stakeholders are being affected by the single decision of one executive.
So, you need to see the big picture before making decisions on a grand scale.
Life skills are based on understanding what to do, knowing how to do it, and doing it.
Collaborating with people not from similar cultures needs expertise, which comes with practice.
The world is diverse, and we all are from different backgrounds and cultures. If you’re unable to collaborate properly, you would be able to understand the same by the expression of the person/s.
There will be chaos in his/her mind because s/he wouldn’t understand what to do in that given situation, and you also won’t be able to understand why s/he behaves abnormally.
Life skills contain ‘life’ because we need to understand the root of its impact on our significant others.
Collaboration with diverse people needs an understanding of a simple equation. When you can’t treat a person of a different culture in a way s/he is used to, there will be chaos in his/her mind.
Thus s/he will behave abnormally. Once you go deep into the chaos, you will understand it’s not only about your behavior. S/he has pathos inside that chaos.
S/he is not comfortable being in the environment, and at the same time, you’re also not treating him/her rightly. Go deep. There is more. Under that pathos, there is ethos.
Ethos is how s/he was brought up and his/her ethnic correlation. If you can understand his/her ethos, you would be able to behave as s/he expects you to.
Practice it diligently to become smart at collaborating with people from diverse cultures. Understand their chaos, under that chaos, pathos and under that pathos, ethos.
Do it now – Do you have anyone working in your team who is from another country or another ethnicity? Practice this with him/her. You will understand how collaboration works when you understand the core of a person’s heart.
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Resilience
Building life skills is not easy. There will be setbacks, errors, mistakes, negative feedback, and other obstacles, big and small.
Will you give up on building life skills? I bet you won’t. But if you will, here’s one of the most precious life skills. It’s resilience.
If you have a few years of experience in the corporate field, you would know that professional life is not always as easy as it sounds in the blog articles. People are real. Events are real. And getting panicky is also real.
Most people give up when the events and people are really hard on them, and they get defensive and want to let go of the job altogether.
But even if you leave the job and go for another one, there will be issues and problems. Instead of giving up on the job, you can do this – get over it. You need to learn and improve at taking criticism and dealing with tough situations. But you can, with practice.
There’s a beautiful expression that says – you can either take obstacles as stepping stones or stumbling blocks. Resilience is taking all these tough moments, negative criticisms, workplace politics, and learning from each of them and saying to yourself that no matter what, you will not give up.
This is one of the life skills most people don’t become good at because they fear tough times! And thus, they don’t any action in regard to creating this life skill. But why do that? Start with the ‘Do it now’ and get on with it.
Do it now – Pick up any small obstacle on your professional path. It may be a rude boss who doesn’t allow you to grow more or a co-worker taking all the credit for your work by doing politics.
We know that these situations are hard to tackle. Now, ask yourself what the first small step you can take to overcome it is! It can be as small as deciding not to pay heed to the issue and getting busy growing yourself.
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Choosing what to work on
As managers, professionals must face this daily question – “What to work on today?” They continuously get confused about whether to work on short-term objectives or long-term projects, which greatly impacts the company.
One of the most important life skills is choosing what to work on this day. And that makes all the difference.
Recent research shows that prioritizing is one of the most important life skills one should have if s/he wants to be a successful manager. Thus, learning this skill is important in your professional life.
Now, here’s how you do it.
In two words, we will suggest you deal with this issue – “build pockets.” Find out the most productive time of the day during your working hours.
For some, it’s in the morning; for some, it’s later afternoon; and for some, it’s the evening. No matter what time it is create a chunk of time where you put all your ‘high impact tasks’.
Again don’t try to do too much during that time. Usually, the pocket for these high-value tasks should be for 2-3 hours with one or two 5-10 minutes breaks in between. For your short-term project, choose a time.
Where you’re not at your highest productivity. We assume that these short-term projects don’t require much of your active attention.
Thus you can put these tasks into the pocket of time where you are not at your highest productivity.
Pick them up and finish them within minutes. Again, don’t take up too much as they’re small. Ensure you don’t take more than 3-5 small tasks during this time.
Do it now – To be good at one of the toughest life skills in your professional life, determine your most productive time. You may need to do some trial and error process to find out.
Once you know your most productive and creative time of the day, simply take out a piece of paper and write down the duration of pocket for high-value tasks.
Also, find out when you’re not at your best and build a pocket for low-value tasks or small projects that need your attention immediately.
Then once you reach the office, write down 3-5 tasks for each pocket. You will see the difference if you practice one of the most critical life skills for a month.
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Empathy – one of the life skill
A recent study showed that if a leader doesn’t have empathy for his/her co-workers or subordinates, then s/he wouldn’t go very far.
Why? Because to work well with a team, you need to understand each team member! You need to see how they work, what they love, what motivates them, what turns them off, and what makes them tick.
Once you know all of it and apply what you learn, you can create the results you look for.
Empathy is one of those life skills which need you to be receptive and understanding than expecting other people to be receptive and to understand you. It is to put yourself into the other person’s shoes and walk on the street to see how it feels.
It’s one of the life skills which can’t be built in a week or a month. It needs an internal dialogue within yourself that you will be taking time to understand your team members daily.
Do it now – Find out a team member who is not easy to talk to. And empathize with him/her. Talk to him/her in private if you can and understand his/her issues, problems, and difficulties and also find out what motivates him/her to work better.
These are the five life skills required to become successful in life. You should concentrate on being a rock star in your professional life. No, building life skills is not easy. But you don’t need to do something gigantic to be extraordinary at these life skills.
You just need to take one tiny step each day, and over time, each tiny step will create momentum, and after a year or so, you will be pretty good at practicing these life skills.
From the above life skills, pick one, to begin with. Don’t start all of the life skills at once. Begin with one. Follow the ‘Do it now’ and practice it day in and day out. You have to be creative and find out what to practice each day.
Make a commitment to practice one of these life skills. If you commit and apply each day, within a period of time, you will see a prodigious difference in your ability. Take them seriously. Life skills are necessary to succeed and are cornerstones of career success.
