13 Jul Practise these 10 skills every day for more happiness and a better life!
via News.com.au by Nela Canovic
YOU may be smart, but without emotional intelligence your career will suffer.
So-called “soft skills” are vital for navigating complex social situations. Communication, language, personal habits and empathy with others all play a role.
For example, a key soft skill is discretion — the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offence or revealing confidential information.
One user of question-and-answer site Quora asked which soft skills everyone should try to develop. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nela Canovic shared this response:
Here are 10 soft skills you should focus on, why they’re important to you, and how to practise them daily.
1. PRACTISE GRATITUDE
Why?
• It trains your brain to focus on positive things and makes you think of what you already have in your life as opposed to what you do not.
• It keeps you grounded in your personal life so you are less focused on what others are doing with theirs, which is a huge waste of time and won’t help you get any closer to your personal goals.
How to practise it?
• Each morning, take five minutes to write down or say aloud three things you are grateful for having in your life right now. It can be something as simple as having a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, food in your fridge, clean running water and electricity, or a great relationship with a family member, a partner or a friend.
• Be specific: if it’s a family member or friend, emphasise which of their qualities you are grateful for (they’re warm, gracious, kind, loving, incredibly funny).
2. KEEP A POSITIVE MINDSET
Why?
• It helps you manage life’s challenges better.
• It also helps you enjoy life more.
• It puts you in proactive mode (life is what you make of it) instead of in reactive mode (life is what happens to you).
How to practise it?
• Apply basic principles of positive psychology to the way you lead your life, so that you can feel a more positive impact on your attitude, your motivation, and your relationships with people.
• Read books by Tal Ben-Shahar, a lecturer at Harvard University, for practical suggestions on how to make changes to your daily life, for example in school, the workplace, and in personal relationships:Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Happiness, andChoose the Life You Want: The Way To Lasting Happiness Moment by Moment.
3. BE FLEXIBLE
Why?
• It helps you grow as a human being.
• You learn to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone.
• You learn to manage change better in your life.
How to practise it?
• Learn the difference between a fixed mindset (believing that our qualities are set in stone) and growth mindset (believing that our qualities are things we can cultivate through our efforts, in other words we can change and grow).
• Read Carol Dweck’s bookMindset: The New Psychology of Successto understand how the view we adopt for ourselves (either with the fixed or growth mindset) can profoundly affect the way we lead our life…
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