Life skills are adaptive abilities to deal effectively with changing challenges and demands. They include decision-making, creative and critical thinking, stress management, interpersonal communication, and problem-solving skills.

Examples of practical life skills are: communicating with coworkers, financial management, personal care, maintaining health and wellness, employability, home maintenance, and managing family responsibilities.

As young learners, we begin a life skills-based education in the foundational skills: reading, writing, telling time, math, creative thinking, and interacting effectively with others. However, we continue to learn and develop throughout our lives.

As we become young men and women, experience and educational training help teach the skills necessary to live a fulfilling and competent life. These skills will be needed in all primary areas of life (eg, career, family, health and vitality, recreation, meaningful relationships, finances, spirituality, education, physical environment).

Many of the skills listed above will be essential throughout our lives. Some will be particularly important during various stages of life. Erik Erikson and Daniel Levinson identified a series of predictable life stages that extend from our teens to post-retirement.1

These stages do not occur in a completely linear fashion. We go through parts of each stage throughout life; however, specific skills are dominant at each stage. Dominant abilities will differ somewhat for each individual. Here are some common examples:

Stage 1. Autonomy and Tentative Elections (Approximately 18-26)

Essential Skills: goal setting, career planning, financial planning, establishing a home, developing self-sufficiency, transitioning to new peer groups, cooperation and teamwork, advanced learning skills.

Stage 2. Young Adult Transition (Approximately 27-31)

Essential Skills: make family decisions, evaluate career options and commitments, empathize with others, adapt to significant changes.

Stage 3. Make Commitments (Approximately 32-42)

Essential Skills: choosing a life direction, making permanent commitments, negotiating and managing conflicts, developing insight/understanding of human nature.

Stage 4. Midlife transition (approximately 42-48)

Essential Skills: Personal and professional reassessment, review of self-image, redefinition of values, rebalancing of focus in key areas of life, adjustment to significant changes.

Stage 5. Leaving a Legacy (Approximately 49-65)

Essential Skills: contributing to society, self-acceptance, managing priorities, forgiving emotional debt, nurturing rewarding relationships, advocating, making new commitments, keen intuition, accepting, and sharing wisdom from experience life.

Stage 6. Spiritual outcome (approximately 66 years and older)

Essential Skills: Accept yourself as dependent on a wisdom greater than your own, recognize and respect the diversity of humanity, complete personal development, adapt to life as part of a larger and lasting spiritual community.

Key questions: What life skills are most essential to you right now? In what main areas of life could you benefit from developing additional skills? What skills do you need to refine and sharpen to live the fullest life possible?

When we regularly track our skill development and rebalance our focus in important areas of life, we can continue to progress and enjoy our greatest passions at every stage of life.

Reference:

1. Weiler, Nicholas W., and Stephen C. Schoonover. 2001. Your Soul at Work: Five Steps to a More Fulfilling Career and Life: HiddenSpring.