We are living in an era where there
is great focus on skill development. Unfortunately, skills are interpreted only
to mean those that could be easily monetised. This distorts the whole paradigm
of life and makes it money centric. Wise men have professed that the purpose of
knowledge should be to educate and help human beings to have a balanced view of
life. It should help human beings to fully enjoy the experience of life. It
should make him understand that money is a medium of exchange and does not
assure happiness. Such a balanced view of life can be made possible through
right education that teaches us to develop “Life Skills” to follow the path of
wisdom.
What are Life Skills?
Life skills are those skills that
are necessary for full participation in everyday living. They help us to live
life with grace, positive mind and gratitude. These are the skills that help us
to deal with challenges in life effectively and attain happiness by developing
objectivity. Life takes each individual through experiences to evolve him.
Knowledge of life skills can give one maturity to understand this process and
attain stoicism towards the happenings in his life.
Life Skills can be classified into
two types; “Gross” and “Subtle”. At gross level, these are the skills
that deal with inter personal skills, effective communication, time management,
problem solving… etc. These skills can give one an edge in dealing
with challenges in daily life. Their importance though cannot be denied, what
could be a life changing experience for the human being is the understanding of
life skills at subtle level that teaches one how to live rightly. These
skills are about the way we should deal with life as it comes. They are
discussed below.
Life is a Teacher
Life is a gift from God to give you
an opportunity to evolve. Experiences that you go through in life, whether good
or bad, are preordained to prepare you for better future. The moment you learn
to appreciate this, your resistance and negativity to the untowardly happenings
around you vanishes. You make a conscious choice of flowing with the nature
with positive mindset. You develop faith that every dark night is certain to be
followed by bright sunshine and the darkness you are enveloped into will soon
give way to the golden rays of sun. You learn a cosmic truth (and a life skill)
so important, that the purpose of darkness was to let you experience the true
joy of sunshine. This learning helps you deal with challenges head on and live
life without any despair.
Love and Accept Yourself
The world we live in is not perfect.
In imperfection lies the beautiful perfection. There is a harmony even in
imperfection. Each individual is unique in his strength and weakness and
complements another such creation of the God. The life skill that can give one
a great strength is an understanding that one cannot live life with regret and
guilt of inadequacy. It teaches that comparison of self with any other is inapt
and against the cosmic law. One needs to focus on one’s strengths rather than keep on trying to improve one’s
weaknesses. This enhances one’s self esteem and teaches one to love
himself. It is obvious that when one loves oneself without any ego as a beautiful
and divine creation of God, one also learns to love others and accept them as
what they are. This shift makes him create a win-win situation even under most
difficult circumstances. With this life skill one learns to accept that there
is a place for divergent opinions without any personal bias and each could be
justified on his respective opinion. Failure to get a desired result in such
cases does not beget guilt of personal inadequacy or anger and frustration of
failure. As a consequence, one’s confidence increases to tackle even difficult
people, and situations. _
(To be concluded next month)
