As Denis Waitley said, “All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing and not moving toward excellence.” It is clear that if you want to adapt to the changing world you need to have a thirst for constant learning and acquiring new skills. By now we all have realized the fact that owning a degree, a certification, or a diploma isn’t getting us where we want to be in life.
Luckily, you are never late to learn new skills. It’s time you dedicate yourself to learning skills that will yield the greatest benefit to you in the long run of life. However, learning new skills doesn’t come to us easily either. Moreover, when it takes to learning soft skills it takes much more time than hard skills. It may take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire them. But, believing that you can improve yourself and do things in the future that you thought you couldn’t do for sure is exciting and thrilling. Moreover, the skills that I am presenting down below may take time to learn but will pay off forever.
Emotional Intelligence
We barely think about “Emotional Intelligence” when it comes to talking about skills. It may sound mere but it actually affects how we behave, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions. Moreover, decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself. This ability helps you with your behavior and relationships with other people.
Likewise, emotional intelligence makes you vouch for what others feel. And that is what makes good service to people. TalentSmart tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills and found that EQ is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs. EQ not only makes you excel in your job but makes you a better person too.
Committing to your goals and promises
Remember how you promised yourself that you would wake up early today? Great! if you actually did wake up early. But if you didn’t, this habit can extend all the way to pursuing your goals as well. We all make promises but following them through is what counts. If you can do tough talk and make big promises but can barely stand by it. Then it shows you lacking the sense of responsibility and owning what you said. You will become the person that a few will respect. As much as making a commitment is important, more is to stand by it.
Listening
How is listening to a skill? I have been doing that since forever. Well, not exactly. A lot of times we think we are listening but we are actually planning what to say next. You have to solely listen to the other person to be a true listener. Listen to understand the other person rather than thinking to rebuttal their points. Hence learning how to suspend judgment and focus on understanding the other person is definitely one of the most important skills we need.
We think we are pretty good at listening but a study at Wright State University surveyed more than 8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as listening as well as or better than their co-workers. In contrast, many of them were wrong. Be a curious listener, don’t let any detail slip away, and ask them more questions genuinely.
Learning new language
Finally, a skill that we all have been hearing, “learn a new language”. We all have had a moment where tried to learn a new language. However, we weren’t patient enough and we left it in between. Yes, it takes patience and time but surprisingly it is one of the most important skills. You never know when it comes to your use. Moreover, imagine being able to watch all your foreign series without subtitles.
Getting high-quality sleep
Wait, sleeping is a skill too? Not exactly sleeping but mastering your sleep schedule is! While sleeping, your brain removes toxic proteins, that you formed in your brain during the daytime. Hence it is no wonder why you need sufficient sleep. It’s because your brain can only adequately remove these toxic proteins when you have sufficient quality sleep. In case you lack high-quality deep sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells. This will eventually hinder your ability to think.
Learning to schedule the right sleeping schedule on a daily basis may take time but it gives you back massive benefits the other day.
