Developing new or existing skills is one of life’s most rewarding and empowering challenges. It involves hard work and the courage to step outside of our comfort zones – but we get so much more back in return.
Because there are no limits to human potential, it’s difficult for us to reach a stage where we can no longer grow and improve. And this thought alone is pretty exciting – because who knows what could happen if we really challenge ourselves?
If you’re interested in personal development and looking for inspiration for where to start, perhaps you’ll consider developing one of the eight skills below.
From resilience and empathy to negotiation skills and public speaking, we explain why these skills can be useful in nearly every aspect of life, and offer tips on how to get started.
1. Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns were a challenge for many of us. But one positive to come out of the experience is that it showed us that we all have the capacity for resilience.
In a nutshell, resilience describes our ability to cope with and recover from adversity. It’s a unique type of strength, determination, or grit that we use to make it through tough times. Much of this is acquired naturally as we move through difficult situations in life – but it’s also something that can be consciously learned or developed at any point.
If resilience is a skill that you’re interested in developing, our article, The importance of resilience and learning to adapt, discusses it in more depth, and offers practical steps to take to improve these skills.
2. Negotiation skills
Negotiation skills are extremely powerful because they enable you to communicate well, influence other people, and prompt positive change. As well as helping you to negotiate contracts and agreements in a more formal work setting, strong negotiation skills can also help you with a host of situations in your personal life.
Perhaps you’re looking to buy a car and want to negotiate a price with the seller, or maybe you’ve got noisy neighbours with whom you could negotiate the hours at which they play loud music.
Contrary to popular belief, being a good negotiator isn’t about always holding out for a hard bargain. When you negotiate successfully, you build better connections with people because you demonstrate that you’re prepared to make an effort to reach an agreement that suits both parties.
If you want to learn more about different negotiation strategies and key tactics for success, it’s worth taking a look at FutureLearn’s free Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills course.
3. Empathy
Empathy is one of the most important skills that anyone can possess. It allows us to understand how other people are feeling so that we can respond appropriately.
Without empathy, it’s very difficult to form meaningful relationships – both at home and at work – because we’ll be unable to connect and relate to others. It’s what helps us feel close to people and recognise how our behaviour could be making other people feel, so we can adjust it accordingly.
Many people assume that we’re either born with empathy or not. But while we’re born with a capacity for it; empathy is actually a learned behaviour that we can continue to work on throughout our lives. Becoming more empathetic often involves working on our self-awareness and learning how to see things better from other people’s perspectives.
There are various courses on empathy online that can help you understand yourself and others better, resolve conflict, and work on building stronger relationships. For example, why not try this one from Coursera?
4. Writing skills
You don’t have to be an aspiring novelist to develop your writing skills. Being able to write well can benefit you in a variety of ways – from sending emails and writing reports at work to preserving your ideas and memories in a journal.
Having good writing skills isn’t just about knowing how to use the correct grammar and punctuation, it’s also about being able to organise your thoughts on paper in a clear and concise way.
As with many things, developing your writing skills takes practise – but there are plenty of courses out there that can act as a helpful guide to learn the tricks of the trade. Before you start, it can be useful to consider whether there’s a particular style of writing that you’d like to get better at – whether that’s children’s story writing, scriptwriting, business writing, science writing, or persuasive writing.
If it’s your general writing skills that you’re looking to develop, there are plenty of courses that’ll help you to do that too. For example, Udemy’s free Starting to write or Make your writing stand out in eight easy steps courses are great places to start.
And, if you’re looking to write your very own book and get it published, we also have an article on the subject here.
5. Decision-making skills
In life, we’re required to make work-based decisions, financial decisions, and decisions over the future of our families. We also make decisions over what to have for lunch, whether to attend social events and what to watch on TV – just to name a few.
And while some decisions are fairly inconsequential, others have the power to affect not only your life but the lives of those around you.
Being able to make decisions effectively means being able to use critical thinking to make confident choices based on a mixture of fact and gut instinct – and stick to them. When we do this, we build confidence and trust in our own abilities and become better equipped to tackle more complex decisions in the future.
Day-to-day life can become much easier when we are able to make firm decisions. This is because we spend less time fretting over our choices, and more time living and learning from our decisions (which can be very liberating!).
Whether you’re looking to develop decision-making skills in your personal or professional life, there are plenty of courses out there that’ll show you how to use tried and tested strategies.
6. Public speaking skills
Whether you’re speaking in front of an audience of one, hundreds, or even thousands, being able to talk clearly, persuasively, and effectively is one of the most important skills that anyone can develop.
Many people dread public speaking and assume that it’s a skill that some people are simply born with. While there are some people who may be natural entertainers, there’s no reason why – with a little perseverance and determination – you can’t develop effective public speaking skills at any stage of life.
Being an effective speaker can help you to sell products, ideas, and, of course, yourself. People are much more likely to believe in you and in the power of what you’re saying if you can articulate yourself well.
People with good public speaking skills are generally looked upon as being more comfortable and confident in their own skin, as well as more knowledgeable and passionate about the topic they’re addressing.
Developing your public speaking skills usually means stepping outside of your comfort zone, which can be daunting. But, in time, many people come to describe it as exhilarating. Some of the experiences that scare us most are the ones that reap the most rewards when we get it right.
If you’re ready to work on your public speaking skills, you could consider joining Toastmasters International for a one-off fee. It has a network of 16,800 clubs across 143 countries and is one of the most reputable public speaking organisations in the world.
Toastmasters won’t necessarily reduce feelings of nervousness, nor will it diminish the surge of adrenaline you experience before speaking. However, what makes it so effective is the way it allows you to repeatedly practise public speaking in a safe environment.
This will allow you to become more comfortable with those nerves and get used to how you feel when they arrive. Once you can manage your nerves, you’ll hopefully become more confident about speaking clearly in front of an audience – even if your heart is still racing!
Most Toastmasters clubs meet once a week to work through public speaking activities and exercises, as well as to support one another on their public speaking journey.
If you’d prefer to develop your public speaking skills in your own time and at your own pace, you can find a range of public speaking courses online, such as this one from Virtual College.
We also have a great article to help you with your journey to becoming a more confident public speaker here.
7. Problem-solving skills
Overcoming hurdles at home or work is generally much easier if you have the right tools to help you cope with them. From figuring out why your computer isn’t working to managing a difficult customer at work, being able to see problems as challenges can be a great way to start focusing your mind on how to solve them.
There are many challenges in life that we initially worry we won’t be able to tackle, but, somehow, we always do. And every time we face a new challenge, we typically feel stronger and better equipped to deal with other problems that we might face later on.
However, because problems vary so much in shape and size, doing what you can to sharpen your problem-solving skills (so that you always have a solid framework to work from), can help you to feel much more in control of your own life, and minimize any anxiety about problems that might come your way.
Future Learn’s free course, Good Decision Making: How to Choose the Right Problem to Solve, can help you learn how to identify, analyse, and solve problems across all areas of your life.
8. Optimism
Optimism isn’t about butterflies and rainbows, nor is it a skill that you either have or don’t. In fact, it’s something you can adopt and develop at any point in life.
People who can be optimistic, even in the most challenging of times, are able to learn from situations, look for the positives, and see new opportunities – even when things get tough.
Optimists generally accept that it’s not possible to control every situation in life, but that you can control how you think about and react to things. For this reason, they’re much more likely to continue moving forward when faced with an uphill struggle, rather than dwelling on the negatives.
Our article, How to learn the skill of optimism, goes into more detail about how optimism is defined, why it’s important, and how you can start applying it to your life.
Final thoughts…
While it’s likely that you’ll already have skills in each of these areas, it can be helpful to look at the different ways in which you can continue to develop these skills. Personal development is beneficial for numerous reasons, including improved productivity, healthier relationships, and enhanced self-confidence and control.
We’ll always be met with new and difficult challenges in life. But the wider our skill set and the stronger our resilience, the better positioned we’ll be to meet these challenges head-on, so we can push through even the darkest of times.
Are you working on developing any of these skills? If so, how? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.