Life Skills

     Today many of the organisations and educational institutions are giving importance to the team work. To work in a team its always a key point to know about our own strengths and weaknesses, and also to understand our team members equally. Check the below link for a Forbes leadership article. http://forbesindia.com/article/insead/take-a-look-at-yourself-in-the-leaderhip-mirror/38999/1

Hello all, This blog is intended to share important life skills and its application. Life skills refers to all those skills which are necessary to lead a healthy life, that is peace with self and the harmony with others. The WHO (world health organisation) has broadly defined the ten life skills and has approved the curriculum design of the same, they are briefly discussed in this blog. Lets try to make it practical.. Wishes, Maaz Mohammed A.Q Ashwin Kumar Ccels La Education (Ccels- credence counseling, education and life skills) Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. Whatsapp: +91 9916 77 77 53 Ccels supported initiatives: - Credence Learning Foundation - National Academy for Moral Development.

        This proverb in the title of the article is a very interesting one i read it on a T-shirt. Now a days this clothing companies run informal education through T-shirts (LoL). I started smiling when I thought about how we follow herd mentality and become an artificial product. Every individual has inborn potentials, this potentials have to be brought out through internal and external motivation.      There are several factors as to why people do not take risk to act as per their thought and reasoning. The one major factor is fear of failing. It is usually very easy to see the result of someone doing something and then following them. Swami vivekananda has commented on leadership as "Take risk in your life, if you win you will lead, if you lose you will guide".       The second factor i like to highlight is inferiority complex which is caused because of low self-confidence and low self-esteem. The doubts a...

          When you are on the way to a job interview. On the road, you put an emergency brake to avoid hitting a person passing by, and due to this a other bike hits your bike. How do you handle the situation? Both might become aggressive or either of one party. Even if you know that you are at wrong first, you might try to defend yourself. Now you just imagine and conclude what will be your reaction in this situation. Generally actions and interactions are of three categories such as Assertive, Passive and Aggressive. Action and interaction depends on how each person perceives and takes the meaning out of each others actions. Which is clearly explained in symbolic interaction theory. Let us know the nature of these three characters:   Assertive- Respect for others' views, brief, clear, direct, win-win.   Passive- Not clear in expression, easily give up, introvert/shy.   Aggressive- Dominating, harsh, efforts are...

     Its not necessary that, all the buses moving on Airport road, should go to Airport. What do you understand from this liner? How many times in our relationships, teams and dealings we conclude that all the buses are moving to Airport, only to realize atlast that its not the fact. In Qur'an Allah says: “O you who believe! If a wicked person comes to you with any news, ascertain the truth, lest you harm people unwittingly, and afterwards become full of repentance for what you have done.” [Sûrah al-Hujurât: 5] He also warns: “O you who believe! Shun much suspicion; for lo! some suspicion is a sin.” [Sûrah al-Hujurât: 12] The intention of refering this above scentences from qur'an is to understand the importance of being non-judgemental from as far as 1500 years ago. And also there are many scriptures which highlight about this.      Being judgemental is to be of a quality of clear mind, unbiased thinking, listen to understand, value for indiv...

The forbes in one of the article has discussed about the google's employee selection funda.  It is a straight 5 point funda. which seem to be casual words, yet powerful. Lets count it all back. 5.expertise 4.ownership 3.humility 2.leadership 1.ability to learn. In the above sequence, the humility has caught the centre stage. when i put my mind to think the humility as an actor, its got a lead role. The history has scripted many dynasties being ruined due to lack of humility.  Thus companies need humility among its people to have culture built to last for centuries. Humility means quality of being humble.  Listen, care, hope for others what you hope for yourself.  Being humble creates a relaxed mind.  And humility demands assertive mind and heart and smile for no reason.   credence life skill tools. Motivating potentials...

Problem solving      It is said that, in life people get 90 percent opportunities and face 10 percent of problems and difficulties. The opportunities are neglected and only the problems are concentrated. The researchers suggest that the goal has to be concentrated primarily rather than a problem itself.      The Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker defined a problem as, "A problem arises when a living creature has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached. Whenever one cannot go from the given situation to the desired situation simply by action, then there has to be recourse to thinking. Such thinking has the task of devising some action, which may mediate between the existing and desired situations".  Credence life skill tools. Motivating Potentials...       Some of the problems solving techniques are discussed below.  Brainstorming : (especially among groups of people) suggesting a l...

     'Once you make a decision, the universe conspires (Unites) to make it happen'. This is said by Ralph Waldo Emerson. When we look at the above words it gives an immense force to do things. Nevertheless, we have to do the major home work for the universe, i.e. Decision making itself.   The decision making is one of the toughest tasks to do. The decision making requires various skills such as probability, forecasting, history study, analysis and briefing.  The best and productive way to do decision making is as a team. In a team there is an opportunity to get broad ideas on pros and cons of a concept, whereas, as an individual decision maker we have to deal with our self-thoughts.  As in today’s world the opportunities and the tasks to perform are very broad, so team is emphasized as an option everywhere.   Credence life skill tools. Motivating potentials...   A researcher Pam Brown, breaks the decision making process...

Creative thinking:      Apple is the cause for Isaac Newton to put hard his thinking, which we all agree. Did newton decide to go and sit under an apple tree and planned to think about apple when he sees one falling from the branch?   No, it was all sudden. Thus creative people take forward the situation into deep thinking, thus bring out the deep insight out of it. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc says, ‘’Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize (combine) new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people’’.              Beat your thinkin...

Critical Thinking:      One sense of the term critical means crucial. And in generic terms crucial means essential or important. The critical thinking is ‘ reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do’. In our daily lives we do so many tasks and take so many decisions like, daily life decisions to family decisions to business decisions. When we go to a grocery store to purchase milk can, we do not think much as to which brand and what quantity to purchase as this is our daily need and the factors are framed already. And at the same store if we purchase a dinner set for our families we look at many designs, take suggestions, think over and then we purchase it. So here we can say that, to purchase milk can we did not stress on our thinking, it was sub conscious, vise a vise to purchase a dinner set it required some decision making skills. Let us formally put the decision making skills put on to purchase the dinner set: 1.  ...

Coping with stress:      I tell you to run an imagination into your mind; you have done a research and you are going to submit the paper in the conference tomorrow. How do you organize yourself? You get nervous, added with little fear. This stress will always remind you that you have to organize all the documents/slides the previous day itself; stress will help you to be at the venue the right time, at the total it keeps you very much attentive. Thus this is a positive stress, as it helps you to be attentive and responsible. It works best in a positive manner if you manage this at its best. And now we will discuss about the difference between positive stress and negative stress. The negative stress is commonly known and called as stress; the positive stress is called as ‘‘Eustress’’.      Eustress is a term coined by a person called, Hans Selye , who is endocrinologist (branch of biology and medicine) . The word eustress consists of two p...

Emotions:       Have you ever observed some of the situations occur in our lives?      Say, you are walking on a road; suddenly a biker comes and lightly hits you, so that your dress gets dusty. How do you react? Shout at him or physically hit him or you keep passive and just walk on the road. Suppose if you beat the biker, you did not have the intention or even think of beating the person, but why did you beat? It is all sudden, because there is always an internal action and reaction process which takes place between our hearts, mind and physical body, which we do not see. Thus in the same kind, emotions also do work within our body and mind. Emotions take many faces as per the situation like, Anger predisposes us to defense or fighting and Fear predisposes us to flight (run away) or fight.      What is Emotion?      Emotions are a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psyc...