Some attitudes and qualities, collectively called Life Skills, infuse your thoughts and actions with Spirit, leading to you becoming more likely for selection by educational institutions and employers.
Life Skills are about living with your true nature. We live in a dual world of light and darkness. The true nature of the sun is light and warmth but sometimes clouds cover it and its true nature is not exhibited. Similarly, humans too have a true nature of light and warmth and we often close our mind and heart thereby being unable to exhibit our core qualities and the attitudes that emanate from it.
Closing your heart and mind to the light of Spirit can lead to burnout. I am going to enumerate the attitudes and qualities to not have and to have, and help you to open yourself up to your true nature.
Attitudes and qualities not to have
1. Know it all superior attitude: This is a sure failure as you are not willing to be a continuous learner. There is always something you do not know so why have a condescending superior attitude about yourself. Be willing to listen and don’t try to always prove others wrong or prove yourself right.
2. Loser attitude or I’m not good enough attitude: There could be many reasons for this from your childhood onwards. The fact is that you are unique just like each of the five fingers in your hand are unique. All five are needed when you want to pick up a heavy load. You are awesome.
3. Cursing attitude: Don’t feel jealous of people who you think have a better life than you. Each human being has challenges and if you get a close look at their lives you will find out that the rich person who moves around in a Mercedes may have a health challenge and needs dialysis every week! So don’t curse those who you think are well off. It just spreads negative energy around which will affect you as well.
4. Fear: Fear comes from insecurities but your true nature is one of complete security. You can reach a state of security with meditation which will then make you more confident too. Caution is okay to protect yourself but fear inhibits your performance.
Attitudes and qualities to have
1. Commitment: Do only that which interests you otherwise you will not have commitment and will not be consistently working on something to take it to its completion. Employers do not want people who leave things half done. They want you to do whatever it takes to achieve Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
2. Work-Life Balance: Set aside time for what you love to do - time with family, hobbies, a larger cause which is selfless such as environment, health & wellness, time with community, social work etc. If you don’t do this, your performance will go down after a stretch of constantly working on something and may lead to stress and burnout.
3. Responsibility: Be willing to take responsibility for jobs tasked to you or if not willing, say outright what help you need to be able to do it. Taking responsibility means looking into all aspects of a job and nurturing a job role till you are assigned to it. It’s like taking care of a family member. You cannot suddenly leave your grandmother alone and go for a holiday if you have taken responsibility to look after her. Employers want you to be responsible for Objectives & Key Results (OKRs).
4. Acceptance: There are times when you don’t like a colleague and if it weighs on you it will get you down. Accept people as they are unless they have asked you to change them. Because a person is a particular way you can know who and what you are by comparison. Acceptance is the single most important life skill and attitude that will add to a state of constant happiness.
5. Cheerfulness: Have you ever seen a grumpy person successful in life? A seed for success is cheerfulness and a happy attitude. Take things lightly or with humour. If you pronounce a word wrong just laugh at it and move on.
6. Appreciation: This is a great way to motivate team members and colleagues. It’s a good idea to acknowledge and appreciate work that pleased you. Also if you don’t like what someone has done don’t call out the person, but call out the work. You can say “the work is not up to the mark” and not, “you are not up to the mark”.
7. Integrity: This is all about doing what’s right in a circumstance when no one is looking. Your inner conscience knows very well what’s wrong so please do not do what’s not right. It’s wrong to steal. It’s wrong to claim expenses based on false bills or inflated bills. For long term rewards you have to be truthful.
8. Awareness: Do you know that Awareness is to be keenly observant of-
i) What is so and why?
ii) What can change it and why?
iii) What are the probable outcomes of your choices?
Curiosity to know these answers will make you more aware and therefore more mature and rounded. You can begin by asking questions about your health or about the health of the planet. Ex. A Disease / Pollution.
9. Empathy and Helpfulness: Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference. You need to place yourself in another's position to know what they may be going through. But just empathy is not enough. You need to give a helping hand too for your empathy to become useful. Helping selflessly gives a helpers high with Serotonin which prevents burnout.
10. Gratitude: An attitude of gratitude keeps you centred and away from negative feelings. Being grateful for what you have creates abundance. Being grateful to people for what they have done for you brings more help to you. Right now, I am grateful to you for reading this article. Are you grateful for something today?
Imbibe these qualities into your daily life. The best way to do it is to learn some kind of meditation and physical exercise which will help the dark clouds that are hiding your true light, to get scattered away.