4 Valuable Life Skills That Everyone Should Master

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Personal development and continued learning are something that is hugely important to me (and how I ended up here, at Wealthy Affiliate).

If you took a look at any one of my bookshelves, you'd immediately notice that the vast majority of titles I own belong to one of the many self-improvement genres.

Whether they're books on improving self-confidence, boosting happiness, learning great communication skills, various religious and spiritual texts, or something to do with marketing and business development, there's something for everyone.

There is a common set of lessons to be learned from these books, no matter the specific topic. I believe it all boils down to four essential things.

4 Skills We Must All Learn

1. Learn to listen to yourself.

What we do well for ourselves we can do well for others. How can we expect to show up for others in our lives if we don't first learn to show up for ourselves?

Self-doubt and negative thinking are incredibly damaging yet dominate most people's waking (and sometimes sleeping) hours. Both destroy our chance of success.

I'm not saying it's easy - far from it in my experience. But it is essential that we "flip the script" and catch these thoughts when they arise.

Thoughts create feelings. Feelings create behaviour.

This is a basic principle of REBT - Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy. If you've never heard of it, I highly recommend you check out Positive Psychology which explains it clearly and has great free resources.

2. Learn internal validation.

You're doing ok! Remind yourself of this when you need to.

Slow down, take things one step at a time, and be gentle with yourself.

In my career, I really struggle with what's known as "imposter syndrome". I often doubt that I'm making any positive impact on the business that employs me.

Why? Because I tell myself that everything I do, I've taught myself from online courses and reading blogs and books and not from formal education. Therefore, I see others in the same line of work as me who have studied degrees specifically relating to this area and I assume they "must be so much better than me".

Recently, the company hired a "Growth Manager" who has given me the push I needed to see how much I have achieved. They constantly thank me for things I've done and point out that many companies in our industry have entire teams dedicated to each aspect of digital marketing - and I've achieved a lot by myself.

Me being me, I thought "gee, that's nice of them to say that", but it wasn't until I sat down and looked at factors like increases in organic traffic that I started to believe it.

It can be easy to list things we aren't good at, but I challenge you to take a look at what you are good at. Do a personal SWOT analysis. Draw up a matrix of your personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Again, there are heaps of online resources for helping with this. One of the better guides I've read comes from CICCC; here's an example of questions they recommend asking:

3. Learn to ask great questions.

There are too many good books and other resources on this topic to list so, do a quick Google search and you'll be sure to discover something that suits you.

The skill of asking great questions improves every aspect of your life; relationships, careers, emotional intelligence, you name it.

If we learn to ask the right questions, we'll get the right answers. Take the time to think about what you're asking and why you want to know the answer. Make your questions clear to understand and open-ended when suitable.

They say the only bad question is the one unasked.

This skill brings me back to Wealthy Affiliate again - if you're going through a class or training and you don't understand something, ask. There are so many people here with knowledge on a plethora of topics who are more than willing to help you.

4. Learn that which you don't know!

I saved my favourite for last. For me, one of my most important personal values is continuous learning.

We are fortunate to live in an age where the vast majority of us have access to everything we could ever desire to learn about. Pick any topic you can think of and I'm sure you'll find blogs, videos, courses, podcasts, books, and more just waiting for you to glean information from them.

Set goals for things you want to learn and take action on it. Don't know how to use HTML and CSS but want to? Take a beginners course. Don't know how to eat with chopsticks? Watch a YouTube video.



I hope you've enjoyed my musings today. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and, of course, your recommendations for books!

I'll leave you with this thought from Matt Lavars:

Change your thinking and you'll change your world. You're only one thought away from changing your life.

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Recent Comments

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Hi Vicki,

Such a nice blog posting. I'm very new to this site and new to affiliate marketing as well. I'm pretty sure you connected with me early on and gave me a welcome, but not being familiar with the site and how it worked or how exactly to maneuver my way around I accidently lost your post. I didn't know how to get back to you to say thank you, until now. So thank you, it meant a lot! By the way, I'm with you, number 4 is my absolute favorite one too, and I love Learning which is a good thing because I'm excited about WA, but I do have a lot to learn.

Take care and thanks again.

Hello, Deborah,
Thank you for your lovely comment.
I'm glad you're enjoying being part of this community so far.
If you love learning you will really enjoy the training and building your site!
Let's stay in touch so we can support each other as we work on our new goals here.
All the best,

Absolutely, and you are correct I have already started my training and I'm now at the lesson on building a website, very excited! :)

To Our Success!

Wow.Vicki, this is so spot on for me . Number 1 and 2 are my biggest down falls.
But once I see people not really applauding me but rather seeing what i can do,I tend not to be the person thinking I cant do this..when I was just shown
I can, by the people I'm helping.which in turn makes me feel good. I really liked this. I'm gonna have to make a copy of it if you dont mind, and keep it in my personal guidance records. So I can read it when needed to remind myself of the things to expect. Sometimes I try to be better then the textbook person just cause you cant learn everything from a text book. Did that make sense. Anyways fantastic article one we all can relate to.
Have a Great Day!!! Dennis

Hi Dennis,
I know how you feel. Those two are ones I'm constantly reminding myself of an working on.
The negativity bias we have is a challenge - but not insurmountable!
I'm so glad you have found this helpful. By all means make a copy for yourself! The more you remind yourself the more it becomes ingrained in you.
Thank you for your kind words, my friend.

You keep writing immersing content that I learn new things from everytime I read it. And the thanks is all mine.and your welcomes are forever.

I appreciate that, Dennis. It's great feedback and encourages me to share more of the random things I learn. 🤩

If you want to be smart, then learn to ask great questions.
But first, you need to find out what that means.
There's so much more to life than just what you can see.
It's time to go beyond the surface, and start diving deep.
The only way to do that is by asking the right questions.
So what are some of the questions that you should ask?
Here are a few:
What makes me happy?
What am I passionate about?
What are my goals?  What am I afraid of?
How can I make a difference?

All the best,

Julia

Wow, Julia! Yes, yes, yes!
Thanks so much for your valuable input.
There is so much more to life - I 100% agree. Your examples of questions are perfect. They make good additions to the personal SWOT analysis I mentioned too.
The last one, how can I make a difference, really resonates with me. So many people don't realise the knowledge, skills, and talents they have, let alone how many others would benefit from them sharing them in some way.
I hope that my post, with the addition of your questions, creates a spark of inspiration.
Thank you again for sharing with us :)

An interesting and inspiring post, Vickie.
I like that quote from Matt Lavars.
Thank you for sharing.

You're most welcome :)
Thanks for taking the time to read it.
I'm stoked that you found it inspiring.

Great share Vickie!

Thank you :)
I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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