Enrich Your Life Skills & Career

Dr. Jitendra Nagpal

Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable our youngsters to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. These are a set of human skills acquired via teaching or direct experience that are used to handle problems and questions commonly encountered in daily human life.  Dr. Jitendra Nagpal is a Life Skills Coach. He is a developmental trainer in youth wellbeing and soft skills for the schools, colleges and corporate sector. In this regular column, he answers the questions of our readers.

Question : I am a 20 year old girl, a hosteller in college with so much of talks going around about regionalism and its impact on the society. As an outsider to the city I want to know how we can use life skills in our daily life to handle these issues for a better society.

Answer:  Our country is known for its unity in diversity, with varied cultures, customs and languages, we still are united by the bond of being an Indian. But, we have to accept the unity our forefathers had a vision of, is not being practised by the present generation. Role of media in propagating these belief systems knowingly or unknowingly cannot be denied along with the deep rooted, perceptions which have been or are being passed on from generation to generation. Life skills are the behaviours which we use appropriately and responsibly in management of personal affairs. A positive youth development is required instead of using preventive ways. This way you will feel a greater sense of competence, usefulness, power and belonging.

In order to master life skills and use it in day to day life situations do a critical thinking of the situation and always be self aware of your interpersonal skills. Combine knowledge, information, values and attitudes, to be able to perceive a situation solve your problem. Effective communication is very important so, never hesitate in conveying your point of view and listening to the other side of the story. Always take the middle path as extremes are always short lived. Life skills give you the ability and freedom to decide what to do and who to be, so use these skills appropriately. Practise sociability, tolerance and your actions should be so that they help in generating change. Life skills are the essential learning tools for survival, capacity development and towards having good a quality of life. You could also take help of your school authorities/ schools counsellor in understanding how to use life skills more effectively. Best of luck!!

(e-mail: jnagpal10@gmail.com)