What are social-emotional skills?
Social-emotional skills help us manage and build healthy relationships, show understanding and empathy. Social-emotional skills allow adults and kids alike to recognize and understand thoughts and feelings. As a result, this helps them to understand one another better. These skills help us to communicate and express ourselves with different people in different environments.
For instance, a child may see her friend crying and inquire as to what happened. Kids learn social-emotional skills from the time they are born. Similarly, babies learn these skills early on life by caregivers meeting their every need, providing a healthy and safe environment, through communication and play sessions. It's crucial for parents to inculcate social-emotional skills in kids early on so that they learn how to develop healthy relations with family and friends alike.
It is seen that kids with healthy social-emotional skills are more likely to succeed and progress in school, work and in life. Additionally, social-emotional skills help kids develop healthy relationships, make friends and maintain them, resolve conflicts, gain confidence, learn social norms, manage stress and anxiety, make appropriate and correct decisions. Similarly, it helps them know their strengths and weaknesses, resist negative pressure, and gain awareness of how others feel. In addition to these values, social-emotional skills help you become a better version of yourself. These skills grow over time and you continue to learn them through adulthood as well. Above all, early experiences with family, caregivers, and friends have a great impact on the type of development.
How can I develop my emotional skills?
We definitely know people around us at home, at work or in our personal lives who are masters at managing their emotions. It does not matter what kind of situation they are in, they are great listeners and always patient. In addition, they are considerate and caring towards the people around them. They do not get angry in any situation and are understanding others' emotions. They are great decision-makers, as a result of how to take a good lead at life. Similarly, they take criticism well and are not offended at small issues.
Would you like to be one of them?
The best part about emotional skills is that they can be developed, learned and practiced over time.
Here are some ways you could inculcate emotional skills.
- Take a closer look at how you react to people.
Do you come to conclusions without knowing the facts? In addition, do you get angry for no reason? Observe how you think and act with other people in different situations. The better thing you can do here is to put yourself in their shoes and analyze the situation from their perspective. Be open-minded and more accepting of their situations.
- Look at your workplace environment.
Do you wish to seek appreciation for your accomplishments? Humility can be a great quality that doesn't display a lack of confidence. In fact, when you show humility, you are aware of the work you have done, and you can be quietly happy about yourself. Hence, sometimes give others a chance to shine and get the limelight. Do not worry too much about yourself.
- Get a self-evaluation.
Try to know what your weaknesses are. Are you ready to accept your flaws? Are you willing to accept you aren't perfect in everything and that you need to improve? Are you aware that there is always room for improvement? It is important to know where you stand, what are your strengths and weaknesses and where you need to work upon. In other words, it is always great to have self-realization of your qualities.
- Take complete responsibility for your actions.
If you hurt someone, apologize. Do not ignore or avoid the person you hurt. Additionally, people are more willing to forgive and forget, if individuals take an honest effort to make things alright.
- Observe how to react to stressful situations.
Do you become angry when things don't work your way? Do you blame others always even when they are not at fault? Anger Management is a useful tool to help keep calm. You should learn to keep your anger in check. The ability to stay calm and composed in difficult situations is a highly respected quality. Similarly, it is an important quality in the work environment as well.
How do emotional skills help us?
Emotional skills are an important quality that is slowly built right since childhood. They help you to be considerate and caring towards others. In addition, they also teach you many life qualities. In order to build the right relationship and to maintain them, social and emotional learning skills are of great importance. Emotional skills are of great use in every step of life, be it your personal life and professional life.
Hence, the absence of social emotional learning skills can risk losing out many opportunities and chances that may come your way. Emotional skills include five core qualities that are crucial in development.
- Self-awareness is the capability to understand your emotions and recognize your thoughts, actions, and words. In addition, try to understand the links between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
- Relationship skills are the ability to build and maintain healthy and great relationships. Hence, building relationships are easy but maintaining them over time requires emotional skills. That's the reason relationship skills are necessary and must be inculcated.
- Social awareness is the ability to have an open perspective and showcase empathy, love, and care. This is an important aspect that helps kids learn the basics of these qualities.
- Self-management is the proficiency to organize thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Additionally, it is important to strike the correct balance between them. You should know when to step up and take action for the same.
- Responsible decision making is the ability to make accurate decisions in all situations. In addition, it also includes responsible behavior in such situations.
How to increase your social-emotional skills?
Social-emotional skills are the qualities that need to be inculcated since childhood. The first step to increasing social-emotional skills is by building confidence. Learn to trust yourself and your actions without any acclaim.
Secondly, be open to learning and having an open mind. Be curious as a child and have the mind to explore new options.
Thirdly, learn self-control. This includes anger management and consideration of others' needs.
Finally, be responsible for all your deeds and accept when you commit something wrong. Learn to apologize and accept your weaknesses. This leads to better self-awareness and a better quality of life. Additionally, this also helps you maintain and build new and healthy relationships.
Social-emotional skills are a cluster of emotions and qualities that are developed over time. You start learning these qualities right from your childhood and still learn into adulthood. These skills include multiple emotions that decide the character of a person.
Additionally, these are the skills that help and maintain your relationships. Your type of upbringing also has a great role in developing your skills. Furthermore, individuals with high levels of reasoning think more logically, is a strong solution finder, is focused on constant learning. They have better reasoning and are quite practical in thoughts, actions, and behaviors.
Finally, social-emotional skills can be learned and developed anytime with the right patience and determination. Use these skills to build your life.