[Solved] How many life skills are there? (2024)

World Health Organization has defined life skills as, "the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life".

Important Points

There are many such skills, but core life skills include the ability to The Ten core Life Skills as laid down by WHO are:

• Communication
• Interpersonal skills
• Empathy
• Self-Awareness
• Problem-Solving
• Decision Making
• Creativity
• Critical Thinking
• Coping with Stress
• Coping with Emotion
  

Additional Information

There are ten core skills that are broadly divided into three general categories i.e. Thinking skills, Social skills, and Emotional skills.

• Thinking Skills:
• ​Creative thinking: Creative thinking helps us respond adaptively and flexibly in our everyday life situations. It is about looking beyond our direct experience, exploring available alternatives, and the various consequences of our actions or non-action. Creative thinking is a novel way of seeking to do things that is characteristic of four components- fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.
• Critical thinking: It enables us to analyze information and experience objectively and assess the factors that influence the way we think and act.
• Decision making: It helps us to deal constructively with decisions about our lives.
• Problem-solving: These skills empower us not only to control our problems but can turn them into opportunities.
• Social Skills:
• ​Self Awareness: It is the ability to understand our strengths, weaknesses, values, outlook character, our needs, desires, aspirations, ourselves, feelings e.g. I like myself even though I am imperfect.
• Effective communication: It is the ability to express, both verbally and nonverbally, in ways that are culturally acceptable.
• Interpersonal relationship skills: It helps relate with people in a positive way. It also means being able to make and maintain friendly relationships, which can be of great importance to our mental and social well-being. It may also mean being able to end relationships constructively.
• Empathy is the ability to be sensitive to another person’s solution, as in the case of AIDS sufferers, or people with mental illnesses, who may be stigmatized and ostracized by the very people they depend upon for support.
• Emotional Skills:
• ​Coping with emotions: It involves recognizing emotions within us and others, being aware of how emotions influence behavior, and being able to respond to emotions appropriately.
• Coping with stress: It means recognizing the sources of stress in our lives, recognizing how this affects us, and acting in ways that help us control our levels of stress, by changing our environment or lifestyle and learning how to relax.

Hence, there are 10 core Life skills.