What Are Life Skills?
Life skills are social and behavioral skills you develop at different stages of your life as you learn to maintain healthy emotional and physical actions, reactions, and interactions. Through extensive research, the World Health Organization (WHO) has arranged the basics of life skills education into ten core elements:
- Critical thinking
- Creative thinking
- Problem-solving
- Decision making
- Interpersonal relationships
- Effective communication
- Empathy
- Self-awareness
- Forming healthy coping strategies for stress
- Developing healthy coping strategies for emotions
With the ten core elements of basic life skills, you can start forming the strategies and techniques necessary to create healthier behaviors and patterns for the life you want and deserve.
Why Are Life Skills Important?
The core elements of life skills are essential to your ability to learn, grow, and change as you engage in the world. When life feels overwhelming, you rely on your life skills to help you cope with and grow through life’s stressors. According to research published by the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, building life skills means you can effectively cope with internal and external stressors to lead a productive and healthy life. Essential life skills can range from daily habits to lifelong behaviors, values, and beliefs.
Some examples of the role life skills play in your life include:
- Hygiene routine
- Sleep routine
- Household chores
- Maintaining a job
- Keeping a schedule
- Making appointments
- Knowing how to budget
- Organizing finances
- Listening and communication
- Healthy expressions of emotions
Developing life skills as you move from adolescence to adulthood is fundamental to everyone’s long-term health and stability. There are numerous skills that carry you through the best and most difficult moments in life. The foundation of who you are and how you move through the world grows out of learning how to empathize with others in childhood, learning how to manage peer pressure and self-esteem in adolescence, and learning how to balance work, finances, and relationships in adulthood.
How Can Life Skills Help in Recovery?
As a fundamental part of emotional, mental, and physical health, life skills in recovery are an essential part of long-term care and healing. The intricate interconnected relationship between substance use disorder (SUD) and trauma impacts the mind, body, and spirit. If you lack the necessary skills to cope with stress, make sure to examine your emotions and express your thoughts and feelings. How can you develop healthier behaviors and patterns?
When your toolbox is missing the key pieces to resolve your struggles, it becomes difficult to discover, learn, and grow because you do not have the tools to help you make the necessary changes. Developing life skills in recovery helps you find ways to cope with and manage stress and emotions in sobriety. When you engage in self-care, build a daily routine, and learn to find healthier ways to work through difficult things, there is less space for unhealthy patterns and behaviors to continue to exist.
To learn more about Grace Recovery’s approach to building skills in aftercare, visit our Aftercare page.
Developing Life Skills at Grace Recovery
At Grace Recovery, we understand how developing life skills is crucial to the recovery process. We have seen firsthand how taking the time to teach the women we work with how to build skills, from making their bed every day to scheduling doctor appointments, has positively impacted them. By developing life skills, we experience more long-term success and overall happiness. This is because when you are happy and find purpose in your day-to-day life, you want to get up and take care of yourself. You want to take care of your body, mind, and spirit because you love yourself and the life you are building.
Happiness and a sense of purpose can mean you commit to:
- Doing your hair every day
- Building a sleep schedule
- Eating well and exercising
- Doing meaningful work
- Fulfilling responsibilities
- Pursuing your education
- Building healthy relationships
- Achieving your short- and long-term goals
At Grace Recovery, we believe in taking an individualistic approach to care and support. When a young woman comes to us, we start with an individual coaching intake interview where we ask her questions to get to know her and connect to where she is on her journey.
Intake Questions:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you rate the significance of female friendships?
- How would you define a woman in recovery?
- Do you struggle to be seen in a crowd or are you well-known?
Intake questions help us understand where you need growth and show us the areas where you are doing well, so we can better support and guide you on your journey toward recovery.
Case Manager and Recovery Coach
During your stay at Grace Recovery, you will work with a case manager and recovery coach to help you build life skills. You will meet with your case manager and recovery coach regularly. Your case manager will help you work on long-term goals, and your recovery coach will help you work on short-term goals to help you build life skills and put them to use.
To learn more about our approach and recovery coaching, visit our Home page.
Building basic life skills is a critical part of the recovery process as you develop skills to form healthier behaviors and patterns. In our approach to aftercare at Grace Recovery, we will support and guide you in the recovery of your body, mind, and spirit. To learn more about our women-only programs and care, call us today at (737) 237-9663.