10 Life Skills That Will Pay You Forever

Over the years, I have overseen multiple cross-functional teams and mentored tens of young people.

A common trend I have noticed is that many of them tend to focus a lot on developing technical skills, and not enough on soft skills.

They believe that the technical skills matter the most, when it could not be further from the truth.

Two things you must realize:

• In the workplace and in life, you will deal with human beings. Everyday.

• People make buying and hiring decisions.

You need to develop the necessary character traits that enable you build relationships with others and push yourself to succeed.

Here are 10 life skills that can help open doors for you, and build you up to succeed. 

1. Making decisions without emotions.

You need to be able to quickly analyze the facts of a matter and make a decision. Emotions can cloud your judgement so you also need to be able to set it aside.

As a leader people will often turn to you for direction and to make the difficult decisions that their own emotions are stopping them from making.

2. Remaining optimistic in difficult times.

Life can throw you curveballs.

You need to have the ability to see the glass as half full. Your faith and optimism can be inspiring for yourself and others, to not lose hope and keep pushing forward.

3. Saying NO and walking away.

Sometimes a situation is bad for you but you are reluctant to take action, so as not to offend others.

You need to know when to put yourself first and walk away. Save your sanity and energy and put it to better use elsewhere.

4. Influencing and persuading others in speech and writing.

Effective leaders are able to communicate their thoughts in ways that make sense and influence others.

This can be in writing, or speaking in front of large audiences. You need to practice and gain mastery 

5. Managing conflict and fostering teamwork.

Whenever there is a group, there is bound to be occasional disagreement. This holds true in the family unit, at the workplace and in other social settings.

It is a natural human trait.

If you can resolve conflict and refocus people on what binds them together, you have a superpower.

6. Staying focused and persisting, even after failure.

Many people are unable to focus on a goal for a length of time. They are soon off searching for the next high.

Many also give up once they experience a setback.

Those who succeed do so not because they never fail, but because they understand that it doesn't matter how many times they fall, but how they get up and apply the learnings.

7. Delaying gratification and investing your money.

Investment compounds.

To build a life of your dreams, you need to have the discipline and foresight to keep reinvesting your talents, assets and money for the long term.

8. Learning, unlearning and relearning.

You don't know it all.

Life itself is a school. Those who win are those who stay humble and continue to learn life's lessons as they go along. 

9. Critical thinking and problem solving.

You need to master the art of breaking down difficult problems into smaller, achievable bits.

You need to learn how to think objectively and analyze situations in order to come up with solutions to challenges.

10. Openness to feedback and criticism

Feedback is valuable as it allows you see yourself and situations through the eyes of others.

If people perceive you always take offense when constructive feedback is given, they will stop and you lose this useful information source. You need to be humble enough to listen and evaluate.

How do I work on developing these skills myself? I do these 3 things:

• Finding relevant short courses on specific skills I want to develop

• Practicing them over and over so I can keep getting better. For example, tweeting every day to force me to communicate effectively in writing.

• Intentionally putting myself in situations that will force me to use them. For example, starting a newsletter and publicizing it.

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. Do you have any specific personal or career development challenges? Send me a message. I'd like to learn more about it and see how I can help.

2. Follow me on Twitter & LInkedin, and subscribe to this newsletter to continue receiving relevant strategies to grow your business and career, and achieve the life of your dreams.