Skills 5 Skills that pay off for Life
The act of learning is as important as breathing. Believing that we can improve ourselves and do things in the future that are beyond our current possibilities is exciting and fulfilling. Still, our time is finite, and we should dedicate ourselves to learning skills that will yield the greatest benefits for us and for the societies we live in.
Certain things in life may be acquired for free, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take time, sweat, and perseverance. That’s especially the case when it comes to learning important life skills. To ascertain which talents are worth the investment, a group comprising of my professional colleagues brainstormed and picked a few, without which this list may stay incomplete.
Here are 5 skills that I believe they never stop paying dividends. These are the skills that deliver the biggest payoff, both in terms of what they teach us and their tendency to keep the learning alive.
1. Positive self-talk
Positive self-talk is an internal dialogue that makes a person feel good about himself / herself. A person can use positive self-talk to think optimistically and feel motivated. It is a natural cognitive process. People might engage in self-talk more when they face obstacles or challenges. People use self-talk either silently or speak to themselves out loud.
Always remember that it doesn’t matter what others think of us but what we think of ourselves certainly does, and it takes time to build that level of confidence and ability to believe in ourselves when nobody else does. On the other side of positive self-talk is negative self-talk that needs a lot of effort and belief in ourselves. Else this can slowly chip away our confidence.
2. Listening
This one should be easy. If we’re not talking, we’re listening, right? Well, not exactly. A lot of times, we think we’re listening, but we’re actually planning what we’re going to say next. True listening means focusing solely on what the other person is saying. It’s about understanding, not rebuttal or input. Learning how to suspend judgment and focus on understanding the other person’s input is one of the most important skills we can develop.
Listening is a bit like intelligence — almost most everyone thinks that he/she is above average. There’s so much talking happening at work that opportunities to listen abound. We talk to provide feedback, explain instructions, and communicate deadlines. Beyond the spoken words, there’s invaluable information to be deciphered through tone of voice, body language, and what isn’t said. In other words, failing to keep our ears (and eyes) open could leave us out of the game.
3. When to Shut Up
Most people fail at intuiting the desires of the colleagues they are talking to. People fail so miserably in judging when a conversation colleague wishes to wrap things up, is an astounding and important finding, Conversations are otherwise such an elegant expression of mutual coordination. And yet it all falls apart at the end because we just can’t figure out when to stop.
There are many instances when keeping to ourselves is the best course, especially when we are angry, upset, agitated, or vexed, we blurt out anything and everything that comes to our mind. And later, we tend to regret it. Keeping our mouth shut when we’re agitated is one of the most valuable skills to learn, and of course, one of the most difficult one as well.
4. Emotional intelligence (EQ)
EQ is “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is our ability to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others and our ability to use this awareness to manage our behaviors and relationships.
TalentSmart tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills and found that EQ is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs. Of all the people who were studied at work, they found that 90% of top performers were also high in EQ. On the flip side, just 20% of bottom performers were high in EQ. We can be a top performer without EQ, but the chances are slim. Naturally, people with a high degree of EQ make more money, than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence.
5. Managing TIME
One of the biggest things that gets in the way of effective time management is the “tyranny of the urgent”. This refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. When we succumb to it, we spend so much time putting out fires that we never get any real work done. How many times have we left work at the end of the day, only to realize that we didn’t move the important things along even one inch?
Learning to manage our time effectively frees us up to perform at our absolute highest level, and it does so every single day of our lives. Effective time management is one of the most highly valued skills in the corporate world. While there is no one right way, it’s important to find a system that works for us and stick to it. The hardest thing to learn for most of the corporate citizens of this world is “How to plan”, not how to execute what we’ve planned, but to make so epic a to-do list and to schedule it so thoroughly that we’re really capable of completing all the tasks on the given deadlines.
Bringing It All Together
We all have skills. But some people are not aware of their strengths. They think they don’t have any talents. Many people know their strengths, but they do not try to improve or sometimes may not get a chance for making it a success.
Always remember that lifelong learning pays dividends beyond the skills we acquire. Let’s never stop learning. We all have God-given skills. It is necessary to discover our greatest strengths and improve on our shortcomings. Use our skills only for good and to help others.
About the Author
Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder and Managing Director of Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan, Evolve HR thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.
