A life skill
A life skill is defined as potentials in a person which enable him/her interact effectively with his/her environment for the purpose of coping with daily life challenges.
The WHO definition of life skills involves abilities for adaptive and positive behavioral that enable individuals to cal effectively with the demands and challenges of every day life
Development and teaching of life skills in any setting be it in schools, churches and in health related institutions has a lot of advantages/benefits to it:-
ü Life skills teaching enables one to have improved or high self esteem by building confidence in him/herself hence good self image
ü Adoption of risk free behaviours like abstinence is a result of life skills education to an individual. Here, choosing abstinence as away of preventing HIV/STIs and unintended pregnancies has positive implication to an individual hence no acquisition of HIV/STIs and unintended pregnancies.
ü Development of positive attitudes. One is able to develop a positive attitude towards him/her and also to others who they interact in their everyday life.
ü Life skills enable an individual to learn has to communicate effectively with people and no conflicts will arise and if any one is able to address calmly.
2a) Self awareness is defined as ability to know yourself better and understanding of yourself in terms of abilities, cognitions , emotion, habits, strengths and weaknesses, values and positions in life and the society at large. It can also involves awareness of one’s unique way of thinking feeling behaviour.
b) Personality can be determined by the following factors, namely
Heredity is one of the key factors influencing personality. It involves passing of generic materials to offspring from its parents or ancestors. This always explains why offspring resemble their biological parents. The genetic materials that individuals inherit give children a unique way of thinking, expression of emotions and behaviour. The various genetic materials that can be inherited includes: physical dispositions such as heights, personality traits such as courage or laziness.
Environment is the second key factor influencing personality. The key two environments are social and physical environment. The social environments include family, schools, religious institution, friends and peers whereas physical environment too influences personality for example being brought up in a harsh wore torn poverty ridden environment cannot manifest personality attribute similar to one brought up in a safe, secure and affluent environment.
c) Personality types of the work of a famous Greek physician Hippocrates who lived from 460 until 377 BC. This physician is behind development of the four types of personality that are widely used today. These personalities are as follows:-
Choleric personality which is also termed as powerful types of personality. They the extravert’s types of personality that is represented by the colour red. The extraverts are always creative and would wants things to happen confident and competent organizers who set high standards for themselves.
Although, they creative hardworking and talented motivators and inspires, they also have other own weakness of easily manipulating and exploiting other people to get what they need for themselves. They are have know it all attitude which makes them to undermine other people and ignore their inputs.
The second personality type is the sanguire, they are always popular and associated with colour yellow, the dominant threat of childhood. These are people who are sincere, curious, baby heart, never grow old and being beauty conscious and always look great physically. Their weaknesses are as follows waste a lot time due to their talkative nature and socializing a lot have a tendency of starting and leaving projects half-way and try to initiate another project of different approach.
Third personality type is melancholic which are also referred as perfect. They are introverts and associated with the colour blue. They are the most gifted with a high intelligence and outient (10) and organized and smart. Melancholic always wants things to be done in order and was a lot of time in pursuit of perfection. Fear taking risks both in business ventures hence they would rather have money in bank accounts rather than risking in closing.
A fourth personality type is phlegmatic which is associated with being peaceful. Associated with colour grey, dominant thread f old age like melancholic, phlegmatic are introverts. They have genuine concern for other people and always wiling to help where they can. They are likeable, friendly and easy to get adversity. A distinct thing about phlegmatic personality is that, they demonstrate the highest ability to control and conceal their emotions. They are good mediators, diplomatic and peace promoters so people generally like them. Their weakness is that they lack self-motivation and rigid and stubborn. Their rigid makes them not to accommodate new ideas.
3) Attitude is a belief which can be based on individual view about something or culturally rooted whereas self-esteemed is having a feeling of confidence about yourself. For worthiness and positive look about yourself.
4a) emotions can be defined as a complex feeling that begins with some type of mental experience such as a memory, imagination, an idea, a desire or awareness of reality or a threat.
b) Emotions being feelings which are complex has its strategies for management namely:-
- Identification of the emotions when a person is faced by a certain feeling, he/she has to find what the feeling is all about and try as much as possible to know the exact feeling he/she is experiencing and ways of tacking it. For example when confronted by fear, one has to know the real cause of the fear and that will enable him/her reduce the threat of fear that may loom to him/her.
- Sharing of feelings: it is always advisable that when faced with a feeling of sorrow and anger it is a good to share with trusted persons in order to be relived of some stressful events like receiving bad news of may be the death of a loved one. This again means social networking for social support incase of a sad situation.
- Building high self esteem: highs self esteem enables someone to have a feeling of considering him/herself worthy and this will make him/her develop a positive attitude towards him/her hence ability to adjust new and harsh situation in life.
According to a Canadians endocrinologist Hans Seyle (1907 -1982) the founder of modern stress research, stress is the physiological responses of the body to physical and psychological demands. Here, the stated statement that depicts stress as the mother of all sickness is true. This is because; stress had been implicated as a factor in sickness or illness though some degree of stress is normal, necessary and unavoidable. Stress at some point motivates us to adjust our behavior to meet changing demands as when we study for an upcoming examination or seek companionship.
The sickness or conditions which are stress-related are as follows:
- Raised blood pressure
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome(IBS)
- Heart attack
- Ulcers especially peptic
- Excessive productions of digestive acids in the stomach which may at some point cause a painful burning.
Effective management of stress involves the coping mechanisms one employs when faced with stressful situation /events in life. It will imply at attempt to deal with the sources of stress or control or reactions stress. It can also mean our defense against the stress inherit in living.
Here the learner’s personal and current effective ways of managing stress are as follows:-
- Identification of the root cause of stress. Here , an individual has to fund away of knowing the exact source of stress ad if possible try to categorize whether the source of stress is psychological, emotional , physiological and spiritual and finally try to find possible solutions to each source of stress.
- Cognitive reconstruction is the ability of an individual to interpret or perceive the source of stress or a stressful situations in a positive manner so that it cannot impacted negatively on him/her for example if one perceives stress sources in a negative manner can block or hinder him/her to see the positive side of stress hence ineffective coping mechanism.
- Exercises is an effective way the learn uses currently to manage stress. This should be programmed way of achieving physical fitness. This includes regular aerobic exercise. Exercise benefits individual become less physiologically reactive to stressors.
- Sharing forms part of effective way of managing stress according to the learner. Here, if confronted by a stressful event lie job-related kind of stress for example too much work ad challenging, sharing with a colleague forms part of therapy as one may be supported psychologically hence building on his/her skills for the preparation to handle such a similar situation in his line of duty.
- Eating a balance diet: a persons body needs nutritious food supplements in order to function normally. Failure to enrich your daily diet will mean the body may lack some food supplements which are very important in the body. for example when one lacks to eat even one meal in a day there is loss of energy and the remedy for it is to eat to regain energy for normal functioning of the body.
Since stress has many negatives that impacts on mankind, there is need to put in place or employ some strategies for management of stress. Here, strategies will mean the approaches used by an individual in coping effective with the many stressors in human daily live. These strategies includes:-
– When a stressful situation might be controllable the best strategy for management is turning life threat into challenges by focusing on ways of controlling it. For example instance when a counselor fails to address client issues, he/she might in future consider to go and attend some refresher courses to update his /her skills for effective delivery of counseling services to his clients
– Changing goals :when faced with an uncontrollable situation a reasonable strategy is to adopt new goals and practical in view of a particular situation for example, a counselor who has been reported several times harassing clients sexually might at some point abandon his/her profession of being a counselor and venture into a different career because is/her frequent exposure with client might lead to dismissal from practicing or in jail.
– Massage therapy appears to be an effective strategy for management of stress as it appears to show down the heart and relax the body. It also increases alertness for example of massage therapies are Swedish. Massage uses muscles manipulation and this the standard massage techniques which is widely used. Another massage therapy entails reflexology that involves manipulation especially acupuncture points in the hands and feet.
– Muscles relaxation technique: because stress is associated with physiological arousal, health psychologists emphasize the importance of relaxation training. This is the most basic relaxation technique which helps in reducing stress. It involves the successive tensing and relaxing of each of the major muscles group of the body. By doing so, one learns to distinguish muscle tension from relaxation and eventually to relive anxiety by immediately relaxing one’s muscles. Progressive relaxing has been effective in reducing symptoms of physiological arousal including high blood pressure.
– Stress management programs forms part of the strategies for managing stress. This is because for the past decade according to research an increase in stress management programs which typically combine regular exercise relaxation training and cognitive behavioral therapy. Stress management programs have been effective strategy for reduction of physiological arousal and anxiety in individuals.
Self esteem is how one feels about him/her self and how confident he/she feels in his/her abilities or how much one loves him/herself and the worthy he/she attaches to himself.
Research has indicated that high self esteem in the key to overall happiness and fulfillment in human life and again society has programmed to human being to believe that they need to accomplish certain things in life and be successive in their lives. The achievement of high self esteem is depicted by the following or traits namely:-
ü People who have high self esteem always feel worthy of love and approval. These people approve of themselves and are not desperate for other approval.
ü Know what is important people with high self esteem know what is very important in their lives. They are aware of their values better for example they value honesty , respect and always discipline in their way of dealing with other people.
ü Aware of their strengths and weakness. These people build their strengths and accept their weakness as a part of their and a challenge to make them grow in life.
ü People with high self esteem also know what they will and will not accept. They always create their own rules and principles in life which make them unique from the rest of the people.
ü Finally, they have an opinion and not afraid of sharing. They are always ok with people’s thinking other wise but are not going to change their opinion to please other people.