Life Skills in High School

The initiatives to develop and implement life skills education in high schools have been undertaken in many countries around the world. Life skills education is aimed at facilitating the development of psychosocial skills that are required to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life. It includes the application of life skills in the context of specific risk situations and in situations where children and adolescents need to be empowered to promote and protect their rights. 

Numerous different life skills programmers identified five basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures. The decision-making and problem-solving; creative thinking and critical thinking; communication and interpersonal skills self-awareness and empathy coping with emotions and coping with stress.

There are many different reasons why these life skills are taught in different countries. In Zimbabwe and Thailand, the impetus for initiating life skills education was the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In Mexico, it was the prevention of adolescent pregnancy. In the United Kingdom, an important life skills initiative was set up to contribute to child abuse prevention, and in the USA, there are numerous life skills programmers for the prevention of substance abuse and violence.

In South Africa and Colombia an important stimulus for life skills education has been the desire to create a curriculum for education for life, called “Life Orientation” education in South Africa and “Integral Education” in Colombia. There are many initiatives of this nature in which primary prevention objectives is, life skills education has been developed to promote the positive socialization of children.

Many countries are now considering the development of life skills education in response to the need to reform traditional education systems. That appear to be out of step with the realities of modern social and economic life. Also, problems such as violence in schools and student drop-out are crippling the ability of school systems to achieve their academic goals.

Furthermore, its wide-ranging applications in primary prevention and the advantages. That it can bring for education systems, life skills education lays the foundation for learning skills that are in great demand in today’s job markets.

The purpose to support the advancement of life skills education. It could be an opportunity for different organizations to clarify and agree upon a common conceptual basis for support from the United Nations system to facilitate the development of life skills education in schools.

It generates consensus as to the broad definition and objectives of life skills education and strategies for its implementation. It Need to improve collaboration between the various agencies working to support life skills education in high schools. There is a wide range of key issues, summarized as below.

·         The definition of “life skills”;

·         The reasons forteaching life skills;

·         Life skills education in schools these days.

·         Life skills outside schools.

Life skills education need to strengthen and improve school health. Also promote the development of long-term and holistic life skills curricula in schools. And promote democracy, gender equality and peace; prevent health and social problems including psychoactive substance use, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy and violence.

Dealing with conflict that cannot be fixed, dealing with authority, solving problems, making and keeping friends / relationships, cooperation, self-awareness, creative thinking, decision-making, critical thinking, dealing with stress, negotiation, clarification of values, resisting pressure, coping with disappointment, planning, empathy, dealing with emotions, assertiveness, active listening, respect, tolerance, trust, sharing, sympathy, compassion, sociability, self-esteem.

Moreover, it the need of times to cater the issue of adolescents; the importance of supporting life skills initiatives for children who do not attend school. The term “life skills” is open to wide interpretation. There should consensus on using the term to refer to psychosocial skills, personal, social, interpersonal, cognitive, affective, universal issues to identify life skills. Make a list of items as what are and what are not life skills.

The promotion of self-esteem, is clearly an important goal for life skills education, but is it a skill? For example, self-esteem, sociability, sharing, compassion, respect and tolerance are all desirable qualities, but, it can be argued, are not skills. Because skills are abilities. Hence it should be possible to practice life skills as abilities.

Self-esteem, sociability and tolerance are not taught as abilities. Rather, learning such qualities is facilitated by learning and practicing life skills, such as self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.

Another area of debate for the identification of place of physical or perceptual motor skills, such as preparing an oral rehydration solution. What are these to be called? If physical skills are not accurate enough, two suggestions must to call these “health skills” or “practical skills”.

There should be clear consensus that livelihood skills such as crafts, money management and entrepreneurial skills are not life skills. However, the teaching of livelihood skills can be designed to be complementary to life skills education, and vice versa. Why teach life skills?

There should be considered that life skills are indispensable for the promotion of healthy child and adolescent development primary prevention of some key causes of child and adolescent death, disease and disability socialization preparing young people for changing social circumstances.

Life skills education contributes to basic education gender equality democracy good citizenship child care and protection quality and efficiency of the education system the promotion of lifelong learning quality of life the promotion of peace. The learning of life skills might contribute to the utilization of appropriate health services by young people.

Areas of primary prevention for which life skills are considered essential include adolescent pregnancy HIV/AIDS violence child abuse suicide. The other problems related to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other psychoactive substances injuries accidents racism conflict environmental issues.

Also, its time to prepare a Child-friendly Checklist for Schools to provide a tool for assessing the social environment of schools. That should be based on the assessment of school policies and the practices of school staff. Demands of modern life, poor parenting, changing family structure, dysfunctional relationships, impacting of social media, new understanding of young people’s needs, decline of religion, rapid sociocultural change. The following reasons why life skills are essential for primary prevention listed in the state of the art in life skills education in schools.

It is the right time to emphasized on life skills education. Which is already happening, and that it is possible for United Nations agencies to speed up its development at country level. Many teachers are already engaging in activities related to the development of life skills but need support to create effective approaches to life skills education for health promotion and primary prevention.

Life skills are generic skills, relevant to numerous diverse experiences throughout life. They should be taught as such, to gain maximum impact from life skills lessons. Though, for an effective contribution to any domain of prevention, life skills should also be applied in the context of typical risk situations.

Facilitating the learning of life skills is a central component to promote healthy behavior and mental well-being. To be effective, the teaching of life skills is coupled with the teaching of health information and the promotion of positive (health promoting and pro-social) attitudes and values.

The development of life skills requires modelling of life skills by school staff and a “safe”, supportive classroom environment, that is conducive to the practice and reinforcement of skills. Furthermore, life skills education needs to be developed as part of a whole school initiative designed to support the healthy psychosocial development of children and adolescents, for example, through the promotion of child-friendly practices in schools.

To be effective, life skills lessons should be designed to achieve clearly stated learning objectives for each activity. Life skills learning is facilitated using participatory learning methods and is based on a social learning process which includes: hearing an explanation of the skill in question; observation of the skill (modelling); practice of the skill in selected situations in a supportive learning environment; and feedback about individual performance of skills.

Practice of skills is facilitated by role-playing in typical scenarios, with a focus on the application of skills and the effect that they have on the outcome of a hypothetical situation. Skills learning is also facilitated by using skills learning “tools”, e.g. by working through steps in the decision- making process.

Life skills education should be designed to enable children and adolescents to practice skills in progressively more demanding situations for example, by starting with skills learning in non-threatening, low-risk everyday situations and progressively moving on to the application of skills in threatening, high-risk situations.

Other important methods used to facilitate life skills learning include group work, discussion, debate, story-telling, peer-supported learning and practical community development projects. Practical advice offered during the Meeting included: be humorous and make it relevant!

Life skills learning cannot be facilitated based on information or discussion alone. Moreover, it is not only an active learning process, it must also include experiential learning, i.e. practical experience and reinforcement of the skills for each student in a supportive learning environment.

The introduction of life skills education requires teacher training to promote effective implementation of the programmed. This can be provided as in-service training, but efforts should also be made to introduce it in teacher training colleges. The successful implementation of a life skills programmed depends on: the development of training materials for teacher trainers; a teaching manual, to provide lesson plans and a framework for a sequential, developmentally appropriate programmed; teacher training and continuing support in the use of the programmed materials.

The scope of life skills education varies with the capacity of education systems. Although programmers can begin on a small scale and for a targeted age group, as a longer-term goal life skills education should be developed so that it continues throughout the school years –from school entry until school leaving age. Life skills education can be designed to be spread across the curriculum, to be a separate subject, to be integrated into an existing subject, or a mix of all of these.

The development of life skills education is a dynamic and evolving process, which should involve children, parents and the local community in making decisions about the content of the programmed. Once a programmed has been developed, there needs to be scope for local adaptation over time and in different contexts.

In the short term after three to six months of implementation, the effectiveness of a life skills must be measured in terms of the specific learning objectives of the life skills lessons. The other factors such as changes in self-esteem, perceptions of self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions.

Only in the longer term after at least a year is feasible to evaluate life skills education in terms of the prevention of health-damaging and antisocial behavior. Smoking and use of other psychoactive substances, or incidence of delinquent behavior. Further factors may be measured to assess the impact of a life skills programmed, such as the effect of life skills education on school performance and school attendance.

Multimedia and social media communication initiatives which seek to promote the status of girls. In a young female character has been created to model the application of life skills in different situations. These scenarios are widely disseminated through popular social media, including animated film, radio drama, story books and newspaper cartoon strips.

Evaluation of life skills education should include a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment. Qualitative assessment gives an indication of how well the programmers implemented and received. This is an important aspect of evaluation, which influences the interpretation of quantitative research findings. Life skills outside school

Current knowledge about life skills education internationally is derived primarily from the school setting. There is a need for greater understanding of the nature of life skills education for young people who are not attending school, to identify the best strategies for supporting effective life skills initiatives to reach out-of-school children and adolescents. There was a consensus among participants that the development of life skills initiatives out of school requires special attention from United Nations agencies.

Different types of life skills intervention to reach out-of-school children and adolescents need to identify. This involves the modelling of life skills using methods such as, social media, video films, puppet shows and cartoons in magazines, newspapers and on television. Such initiatives can be coupled with support materials to introduce discussion about the scenarios presented. The support materials can be developed for implementation by peer or other educators in settings such as youth clubs.

Short courses of life skills training can be carried out with children and adolescents who participate in sports and recreational clubs. Life skills training workshops can also be integrated into existing courses offering training in livelihood or vocational skills. Life skills for vulnerable children and adolescents. There is a need for life skills interventions to reach vulnerable children such as street children, sexually exploited and working children, and orphans.

Little is known about life skills interventions with vulnerable young people, although there are many indications that life skills play an important role in determining which children cope in difficult circumstances. These days, excess use of mobile and social media is damaging life skills.

One suggestion made during the Meeting was to start from what the children are interested in and experiencing and to use that as a basis for building life skills sessions with them. However, that would mean a less structured approach, implying an additional need for well-trained educators.

All these three approaches to life skills learning are most likely to rely on short-term interventions. Given the limitations on access to out-of-school children and adolescents overran extended period, an important consideration in the development of life skills interventions will be to identify what is the minimum intervention required to have a positive impact.

Further, there is a need for inter-agency collaboration to accelerate programming, monitoring and evaluation for life skills education in and out of schools. It is suggested collaboration in the design of life skills curricula in schools; the development of tools for the monitoring and evaluation of life skills education initiatives; the development of guidelines and training materials to support life skills initiatives for out-of-school children and adolescents; and an e-mail network to facilitate exchange of information between agencies.

The initiatives to develop and implement life skills education in high schools have been undertaken in many countries around the world. Life skills education is aimed at facilitating the development of psychosocial skills that are required to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life. It includes the application of life skills in the context of specific risk situations and in situations where children and adolescents need to be empowered to promote and protect their rights. 

Numerous different life skills programmers identified five basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures. The decision-making and problem-solving; creative thinking and critical thinking; communication and interpersonal skills self-awareness and empathy coping with emotions and coping with stress.

There are many different reasons why these life skills are taught in different countries. In Zimbabwe and Thailand, the impetus for initiating life skills education was the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In Mexico, it was the prevention of adolescent pregnancy. In the United Kingdom, an important life skills initiative was set up to contribute to child abuse prevention, and in the USA, there are numerous life skills programmers for the prevention of substance abuse and violence.

In South Africa and Colombia an important stimulus for life skills education has been the desire to create a curriculum for education for life, called “Life Orientation” education in South Africa and “Integral Education” in Colombia. There are many initiatives of this nature in which primary prevention objectives is, life skills education has been developed to promote the positive socialization of children.

Many countries are now considering the development of life skills education in response to the need to reform traditional education systems. That appear to be out of step with the realities of modern social and economic life. Also, problems such as violence in schools and student drop-out are crippling the ability of school systems to achieve their academic goals.

Furthermore, its wide-ranging applications in primary prevention and the advantages. That it can bring for education systems, life skills education lays the foundation for learning skills that are in great demand in today’s job markets.

The purpose to support the advancement of life skills education. It could be an opportunity for different organizations to clarify and agree upon a common conceptual basis for support from the United Nations system to facilitate the development of life skills education in schools.

It generates consensus as to the broad definition and objectives of life skills education and strategies for its implementation. It Need to improve collaboration between the various agencies working to support life skills education in high schools. There is a wide range of key issues, summarized as below.

·         The definition of “life skills”;

·         The reasons forteaching life skills;

·         Life skills education in schools these days.

·         Life skills outside schools.

Life skills education need to strengthen and improve school health. Also promote the development of long-term and holistic life skills curricula in schools. And promote democracy, gender equality and peace; prevent health and social problems including psychoactive substance use, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy and violence.

Dealing with conflict that cannot be fixed, dealing with authority, solving problems, making and keeping friends / relationships, cooperation, self-awareness, creative thinking, decision-making, critical thinking, dealing with stress, negotiation, clarification of values, resisting pressure, coping with disappointment, planning, empathy, dealing with emotions, assertiveness, active listening, respect, tolerance, trust, sharing, sympathy, compassion, sociability, self-esteem.

Moreover, it the need of times to cater the issue of adolescents; the importance of supporting life skills initiatives for children who do not attend school. The term “life skills” is open to wide interpretation. There should consensus on using the term to refer to psychosocial skills, personal, social, interpersonal, cognitive, affective, universal issues to identify life skills. Make a list of items as what are and what are not life skills.

The promotion of self-esteem, is clearly an important goal for life skills education, but is it a skill? For example, self-esteem, sociability, sharing, compassion, respect and tolerance are all desirable qualities, but, it can be argued, are not skills. Because skills are abilities. Hence it should be possible to practice life skills as abilities.

Self-esteem, sociability and tolerance are not taught as abilities. Rather, learning such qualities is facilitated by learning and practicing life skills, such as self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.

Another area of debate for the identification of place of physical or perceptual motor skills, such as preparing an oral rehydration solution. What are these to be called? If physical skills are not accurate enough, two suggestions must to call these “health skills” or “practical skills”.

There should be clear consensus that livelihood skills such as crafts, money management and entrepreneurial skills are not life skills. However, the teaching of livelihood skills can be designed to be complementary to life skills education, and vice versa. Why teach life skills?

There should be considered that life skills are indispensable for the promotion of healthy child and adolescent development primary prevention of some key causes of child and adolescent death, disease and disability socialization preparing young people for changing social circumstances.

Life skills education contributes to basic education gender equality democracy good citizenship child care and protection quality and efficiency of the education system the promotion of lifelong learning quality of life the promotion of peace. The learning of life skills might contribute to the utilization of appropriate health services by young people.

Areas of primary prevention for which life skills are considered essential include adolescent pregnancy HIV/AIDS violence child abuse suicide. The other problems related to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other psychoactive substances injuries accidents racism conflict environmental issues.

Also, its time to prepare a Child-friendly Checklist for Schools to provide a tool for assessing the social environment of schools. That should be based on the assessment of school policies and the practices of school staff. Demands of modern life, poor parenting, changing family structure, dysfunctional relationships, impacting of social media, new understanding of young people’s needs, decline of religion, rapid sociocultural change. The following reasons why life skills are essential for primary prevention listed in the state of the art in life skills education in schools.

It is the right time to emphasized on life skills education. Which is already happening, and that it is possible for United Nations agencies to speed up its development at country level. Many teachers are already engaging in activities related to the development of life skills but need support to create effective approaches to life skills education for health promotion and primary prevention.

Life skills are generic skills, relevant to numerous diverse experiences throughout life. They should be taught as such, to gain maximum impact from life skills lessons. Though, for an effective contribution to any domain of prevention, life skills should also be applied in the context of typical risk situations.

Facilitating the learning of life skills is a central component to promote healthy behavior and mental well-being. To be effective, the teaching of life skills is coupled with the teaching of health information and the promotion of positive (health promoting and pro-social) attitudes and values.

The development of life skills requires modelling of life skills by school staff and a “safe”, supportive classroom environment, that is conducive to the practice and reinforcement of skills. Furthermore, life skills education needs to be developed as part of a whole school initiative designed to support the healthy psychosocial development of children and adolescents, for example, through the promotion of child-friendly practices in schools.

To be effective, life skills lessons should be designed to achieve clearly stated learning objectives for each activity. Life skills learning is facilitated using participatory learning methods and is based on a social learning process which includes: hearing an explanation of the skill in question; observation of the skill (modelling); practice of the skill in selected situations in a supportive learning environment; and feedback about individual performance of skills.

Practice of skills is facilitated by role-playing in typical scenarios, with a focus on the application of skills and the effect that they have on the outcome of a hypothetical situation. Skills learning is also facilitated by using skills learning “tools”, e.g. by working through steps in the decision- making process.

Life skills education should be designed to enable children and adolescents to practice skills in progressively more demanding situations for example, by starting with skills learning in non-threatening, low-risk everyday situations and progressively moving on to the application of skills in threatening, high-risk situations.

Other important methods used to facilitate life skills learning include group work, discussion, debate, story-telling, peer-supported learning and practical community development projects. Practical advice offered during the Meeting included: be humorous and make it relevant!

Life skills learning cannot be facilitated based on information or discussion alone. Moreover, it is not only an active learning process, it must also include experiential learning, i.e. practical experience and reinforcement of the skills for each student in a supportive learning environment.

The introduction of life skills education requires teacher training to promote effective implementation of the programmed. This can be provided as in-service training, but efforts should also be made to introduce it in teacher training colleges. The successful implementation of a life skills programmed depends on: the development of training materials for teacher trainers; a teaching manual, to provide lesson plans and a framework for a sequential, developmentally appropriate programmed; teacher training and continuing support in the use of the programmed materials.

The scope of life skills education varies with the capacity of education systems. Although programmers can begin on a small scale and for a targeted age group, as a longer-term goal life skills education should be developed so that it continues throughout the school years –from school entry until school leaving age. Life skills education can be designed to be spread across the curriculum, to be a separate subject, to be integrated into an existing subject, or a mix of all of these.

The development of life skills education is a dynamic and evolving process, which should involve children, parents and the local community in making decisions about the content of the programmed. Once a programmed has been developed, there needs to be scope for local adaptation over time and in different contexts.

In the short term after three to six months of implementation, the effectiveness of a life skills must be measured in terms of the specific learning objectives of the life skills lessons. The other factors such as changes in self-esteem, perceptions of self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions.

Only in the longer term after at least a year is feasible to evaluate life skills education in terms of the prevention of health-damaging and antisocial behavior. Smoking and use of other psychoactive substances, or incidence of delinquent behavior. Further factors may be measured to assess the impact of a life skills programmed, such as the effect of life skills education on school performance and school attendance.

Multimedia and social media communication initiatives which seek to promote the status of girls. In a young female character has been created to model the application of life skills in different situations. These scenarios are widely disseminated through popular social media, including animated film, radio drama, story books and newspaper cartoon strips.

Evaluation of life skills education should include a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment. Qualitative assessment gives an indication of how well the programmers implemented and received. This is an important aspect of evaluation, which influences the interpretation of quantitative research findings. Life skills outside school

Current knowledge about life skills education internationally is derived primarily from the school setting. There is a need for greater understanding of the nature of life skills education for young people who are not attending school, to identify the best strategies for supporting effective life skills initiatives to reach out-of-school children and adolescents. There was a consensus among participants that the development of life skills initiatives out of school requires special attention from United Nations agencies.

Different types of life skills intervention to reach out-of-school children and adolescents need to identify. This involves the modelling of life skills using methods such as, social media, video films, puppet shows and cartoons in magazines, newspapers and on television. Such initiatives can be coupled with support materials to introduce discussion about the scenarios presented. The support materials can be developed for implementation by peer or other educators in settings such as youth clubs.

Short courses of life skills training can be carried out with children and adolescents who participate in sports and recreational clubs. Life skills training workshops can also be integrated into existing courses offering training in livelihood or vocational skills. Life skills for vulnerable children and adolescents. There is a need for life skills interventions to reach vulnerable children such as street children, sexually exploited and working children, and orphans.

Little is known about life skills interventions with vulnerable young people, although there are many indications that life skills play an important role in determining which children cope in difficult circumstances. These days, excess use of mobile and social media is damaging life skills.

One suggestion made during the Meeting was to start from what the children are interested in and experiencing and to use that as a basis for building life skills sessions with them. However, that would mean a less structured approach, implying an additional need for well-trained educators.

All these three approaches to life skills learning are most likely to rely on short-term interventions. Given the limitations on access to out-of-school children and adolescents overran extended period, an important consideration in the development of life skills interventions will be to identify what is the minimum intervention required to have a positive impact.

Further, there is a need for inter-agency collaboration to accelerate programming, monitoring and evaluation for life skills education in and out of schools. It is suggested collaboration in the design of life skills curricula in schools; the development of tools for the monitoring and evaluation of life skills education initiatives; the development of guidelines and training materials to support life skills initiatives for out-of-school children and adolescents; and an e-mail network to facilitate exchange of information between agencies.

Life Skills High School[/caption]

Read More – What is Happiness in Life

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Confidence Quotes for Girls

If you’re a girl, then with no reasons you are not getting proper opportunities as the boys had. In many countries’ girls are not treated well and living under tough circumstances. They are lacking in self-confidence due to no education. Despite of all poor aspects, today girls are even not behind boys. They are working in difficult fields, like the pilot, army and followed their dreams to reach their goals. Girls are often limited to show pieces in different ways.

But keep in mind beauty doesn’t come from the outside, it comes from within. A woman can change the entire generation for several decades. A wisdom girl leaves true love, generosity, good deeds, kindness in their wake. This is what you need to improve your self-confidence to reach the height of success.

Many inspiring women had a great impact on the world with their passion and believe in herself. You just need to be brave and do it. Many women spent painful years to determine their own self-worth that allowed her to grow the essential confidence for being a strong and independent woman.

A strong lady stands up for herself and family. She feels deeply and loves fiercely. Her tears flow as abundantly as her laughter, both softness and powerful. The following inspirational Confidence Quotes for Girls make a positive dent at your personality. Read More – What is Happiness in Life / Source: CP

·         I’m Tough Ambitious & I Know Exactly What I Want. If That Makes Me a Bitch. “Madonna”

·         I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in Miracle. “Audrey Hepburn”

·         I am not a difficult woman at all. I am simply a strong woman and know my worth. “Angelina Jolie”

·         Be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of someone else. “Judy Garland”

·         Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for. “Jennifer Lopez”

·          

·         The world needs strong women. Women who will lift and build others, who will love and be loved. Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce. Women of indomitable will. “Amy Tenney”

·         Once you figure out what respect tastes like, it tastes better than attention. “Pink”

·         She wore her scars as her best attire. A stunning dress made of hellfire. “Daniel Saint”

·         She was a wild one; always stomping on eggshells that everyone else tip-toed on. “Kaitlin Foster”

·         Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women. “Maya Angelon”

·         Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness. “Oprah”

·         I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. “Mother Teresa”

·         Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. “Charlotte Whitton”

·         A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. “Diane Mariechild”

·         You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through. “Rosalynn Carter”

·         Everyone has inside of her a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is. “Anne Frank”

·         Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. “Helen Keller”

·         If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. “Margaret Thatcher”

·         It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I’m not going to be silent.“Madeleine Albright”

·         You don’t have to play masculine to be a strong woman. “Mary Elizabeth Winstead”

·         Sometimes I wake up and think I look horrible. And sometimes I see a strong woman. “Irina Shayk”

·         A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not to be done. “Marge Piercy”

·         Let’s be clear, I’m a strong woman. “Bethenny Frankel”

·         Happiness and confidence are the prettiest things you can wear. “Taylor Swift”

·         A strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars. “Carly Simon”

·         A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. “Diane Mariechild”

·         Imperfections are beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be ridiculous than boring. “Marilyn Monroe”

·         I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself. “Emma Stone”

·         A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. “Coco Chanel”

·         There are two ways of spreading light. To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. “Edith Wharton”

·         No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.“Eleanor Roosevelt”

·         If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. “Margaret Thatcher”

·         I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself. “Emma Stone”

·         Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself. Keep fighting for your dreams.
“Gabby Douglas”

·         Women’s are made to be loved nor for understood. “Oscar Wilde”

·         Be Careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening. “Lisa M. Hayes” 

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3. Boost Your Energy, Immune System, Sexual Function, Strength & Athletic Performance
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What Makes You Happy

So, what has science learned about what makes the human heart sing? More than one might imagine along with some surprising things about what doesn’t ring our inner chimes. Take wealth, for instance, and all the delightful things that money can buy. Research by Diener, among others, has shown that once your basic needs are met, additional income does little to raise your sense of satisfaction with life a good education?

Sorry, neither education nor, for that matter, a high IQ paves the road to happiness. Youth? No, again. In fact, older people are more dependably satisfied with their lives than the young. And they are less prone to dark moods. A survey conducts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people ages 20 to 24 are sad for an average of 3.4 days a month, as opposed to just 2.3 days for people ages 65 to 74.  

Married people are generally happier than singles, but that may be because they were happier to begin with sunny days? Nope, although a study showed that Midwesterners think folks living in balmy California are happier and that Californians incorrectly believe this about themselves too. On the positive side, religious faith seems to genuinely lift the spirit. Though it’s tough to tell whether it’s the God part or the community aspect that does the heavy lifting. 

A study conducted at the University of Illinois by Diener and Seligman found that the most salient characteristics shared by the 10% of students with the highest levels of happiness. However, the fewest signs of depression were their strong ties to friends and family and commitment to spending time with them. Word needs to be spread. It is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support to be happy.

Measuring the Moods

Of course, happiness is not a static state. Even the happiest of people the cheeriest 10% feel blue at times. And even the bluest have their moments of joy. That has presented a challenge to social scientists trying to measure happiness. That, along with the simple fact that happiness is inherently subjective. To get around those challenges, researchers have devised several methods of assessment.

Diener has created one of the most basic and widely used tools, the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Though some scholars have questioned the validity of this simple, five-question survey, Diener has found that it squares well with other measures of happiness, such as impressions from friends and family, expression of positive emotion and low incidence of depression.

Researchers have devised other tools to look at more transient moods.  A popular Csikszentmihalyi pioneered a method of using beepers and, later, handheld computers to contact subjects at random intervals. A pop-up screen presents an array of questions. What are you doing? How much are you enjoying it? Are you alone or interacting with someone else?

The method, called experience sampling, is costly, intrusive and time consuming, but it provides an excellent picture of satisfaction and engagement at a specific time during a specific activity. Just month, a team led by Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University unveiled a new tool for sizing up happiness: the day reconstruction method.

Participants fill out a long diary and questionnaire detailing everything they did on the previous day. And whom they were with at the time and rating a range of feelings during each episode (happy, impatient, depressed, worried, tired, etc.) on a seven-point scale. The method was tested on a group of 900 women in Texas with some surprising results. It turned out that the five most positive activities for these women were (in descending order) sex, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating, and eating.

Exercising and watching TV were not far behind. But way down the list was taking care of children, which ranked below cooking and only slightly above housework. That may seem surprising, given that people frequently cite their children as their biggest source of delight which was a finding of a Time poll on happiness conducted. When asked, “What one thing in life has brought you the greatest happiness?

35% said it was their children or grandchildren or both. (Spouse was far behind at just 9%, and religion a runner-up at 17%.) The discrepancy with the study of Texas women points up one of the key debates in happiness research. Which kind of information is more meaningful global reports of well-being (My life is happy, and my children are my greatest joy) or more specific data on enjoyment of day-to-day experiences (What a night! The kids were such a pain!)?

The two are very different, and studies show they do not correlate well. Our overall happiness is not merely the sum of our happy moments minus the sum of our angry or sad ones. This is true whether you are looking at how satisfied you are with your life in general or with something more specific, such as your kids, your car, your mobile, your favorite game, your job or your vacation. Kahneman likes to distinguish between the experiencing self and the remembering self.

His studies show that what you remember of an experience is particularly influenced by the emotional high and low points and by how it ends. So, if you were to randomly beep someone on vacation in Italy. You might catch that person waiting furiously for a slow-moving waiter to take an order or grousing about the high cost of the pottery. But if you ask when it’s over, “How was the vacation in Italy?”, the average person remembers the peak moments and how he or she felt at the end of the trip.

The power of endings has been demonstrated in some remarkable experiments by Kahneman. One such study involved people undergoing a colonoscopy, an uncomfortable procedure in which a flexible scope is moved through the colon. While a control group had the standard procedure, half the subjects endured an extra 60 seconds during which the scope was held stationary; movement of the scope is typically the source of the discomfort.

It turned out that members of the group that had the somewhat longer procedure with a benign ending found it less unpleasant than the control group, and they were more willing to have a repeat colonoscopy. Asking people how happy they are, Kahneman contends, “is very much like asking them about the colonoscopy after it’s over.

There’s a lot that escapes them.” Kahneman therefore believes that social scientists studying happiness should pay careful attention to people’s actual experiences rather than just survey their reflections. That, he feels, is especially relevant if research is to inform quality-of-life policies like how much money our society should devote to parks and recreation or how much should be invested in improving workers’ commutes.

You cannot ignore how people spend their time,” he says, “when thinking about well-being.” Seligman, in contrast, puts the emphasis on the remembering self. “I think we are our memories more than we are the sum total of our experiences,” he says. For him, studying moment-to-moment experiences puts too much emphasis on transient pleasures and displeasures. Happiness goes deeper than that, he argues in his 2002 book Authentic Happiness.

 As a result of his research, he finds three components of happiness: pleasure (“the smiley-face piece”), engagement (the depth of involvement with one’s family, work, romance and hobbies) and meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential, he insists: “This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.

CAN WE GET HAPPIER?

One of the biggest issues in happiness research is the question of how much our happiness is under our control. The University of Minnesota researcher David Lykken published a paper looking at the role of genes in determining one’s sense of satisfaction in life. Lykken, gathered information on 4,000 sets of twins born in Minnesota from 1936 through 1955. After comparing happiness data on identical vs. fraternal twins, he concluded that about 50% of one’s satisfaction with life comes from genetic programming.

Genes influence such traits as having a sunny, easygoing personality; dealing well with stress; and feeling low levels of anxiety and depression.) Moreover, he found that circumstantial factors like income, marital status, religion and education contribute only about 8% to one’s overall well-being. He attributes the remaining percentage to “life’s slings and arrows.” Because of the large influence of our genes. He proposed the idea that each of us has a happiness set point much like our set point for body weight.

No matter what happens in our life good, bad, spectacular, horrific we tend to return in short order to our set range. Some post-tsunami images last week of smiling Asian children returning to school underscored this amazing capacity to right ourselves. And a substantial body of research documents our tendency to return to the norm. A study of lottery winners done in 1978 found, for instance, that they did not wind up significantly happier than a control group. Even people who lose the use of their limbs to a devastating accident tend to bounce back, though perhaps not all the way to their base line.

One study found that a week after the accident, the injured were severely angry and anxious, but after eight weeks happiness was their strongest emotion. Psychologists call this adjustment to new circumstances adaptation. “Everyone is surprised by how happy paraplegics can be,” says Kahneman. The reason is that they are not paraplegic full time. They do other things. They enjoy their meals, their friends.

They read the news. It has to do with the allocation of attention.” In his extensive work on adaptation, Edward Diener has found two life events that seem to knock people lastingly below their happiness set point: loss of a spouse and loss of a job. It takes five to eight years for a widow to regain her previous sense of well-being. Similarly, the effects of a job loss linger long after the individual has returned to the work force.

When he proposed his set-point theory eight years ago, Lykken came to a drastic conclusion. It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller. He has since come to regret that sentence. I made a dumb statement in the original article. It’s clear that we can change our happiness levels widely up or down. He revisionist thinking coincides with the view of the positive-psychology movement, which has put a premium on research showing you can raise your level of happiness.

For Seligman and likeminded researchers, that involves working on the three components of happiness getting more pleasure out of life (which can be done by savoring sensory experiences, although, he warns, “you’re never going to make a curmudgeon into a giggly person”), becoming more engaged in what you do and finding ways of making your life feel more meaningful. There are numerous ways to do that, they argue.

At the University of California at Riverside, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky is using grant money from the National Institutes of Health to study different kinds of happiness boosters. One is the gratitude journal a diary in which subjects write down things for which they are thankful. She has found that taking the time to conscientiously count their blessings once a week significantly increased subjects’ overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain.

Gratitude exercises can do more than lift one’s mood. At the University of California at Davis, psychologist Robert Emmons found they improve physical health, raise energy levels and, for patients with neuromuscular disease, relieve pain and fatigue. “The ones who benefited most tended to elaborate more and have a wider span of things they’re grateful for,” he notes.

Another happiness booster, say positive psychologists, is performing acts of altruism or kindness visiting a nursing home, helping a friend’s child with homework, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, writing a letter to a grandparent. Doing five kind acts a week, especially all in a single day, gave a measurable boost to Lyubomirsky’s subjects. Seligman has tested similar interventions in controlled trials at Penn and in huge experiments conducted over the Internet.

The single most effective way to turbocharge your joy, he says, is to make a “gratitude visit.” That means writing a testimonial thanking a teacher, pastor or grandparent anyone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude and then visiting that person to read him or her the letter of appreciation. “The remarkable thing. It is that people who do this just once are measurably happier and less depressed a month later.

But it’s gone by three months.” Less powerful but more lasting, he says, is an exercise he calls three blessings taking time each day to write down a trio of things that went well and why. People are less depressed and happier three months later and six months later. Seligman’s biggest recommendation for lasting happiness is to figure out your strengths and find new ways to deploy them.

Increasingly, his work, done in collaboration with Christopher Peterson at the University of Michigan. He has focused on defining such human strengths and virtues as generosity, humor, gratitude and zest and studying how they relate to happiness. As a professor, I don’t like this, but the cerebral virtues curiosity, love of learning are less strongly tied to happiness than interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude and capacity for love.

Why do exercising gratitude, kindness and other virtues provide a lift? “Giving makes you feel good about yourself,” says Peterson. When you’re volunteering, you’re distracting yourself from your own existence, and that’s beneficial. More fuzzily, giving puts meaning into your life. You have a sense of purpose because you matter to someone else.” Virtually all the happiness exercises being tested by positive psychologists, he says, make people feel more connected to others.

That seems to be the most fundamental finding from the science of happiness. Almost every person feels happier when they are with other people,” observes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It’s paradoxical because many of us think we can hardly wait to get home and be alone with nothing to do, but that’s a worst-case scenario. If you are alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets. But can a loner really become more gregarious through acts-of-kindness exercises?

Can a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist learn to see the glass as half full? Can gratitude journals work their magic over the long haul? And how many of us could keep filling them with fresh thankful thoughts year after year? Sonja Lyubomirsky believes it’s all possible: I’ll quote Oprah here, which I don’t normally do.

She was asked how she runs five miles a day, and she said, ‘I recommit to it every day of my life.’ I think happiness is like that. Every day you must renew your commitment. Hopefully, some of the strategies will become habitual over time and not a huge effort.” But other psychologists are more skeptical. Some simply doubt that personality is that flexible or that individuals can or should change their habitual coping styles.

If you are a pessimist who really thinks through in detail what might go wrong, that’s a strategy that’s likely to work very well for you,” says Julie Norem, a psychology professor at Wellesley College and the author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking. “In fact, you may be messed up if you try to substitute a positive attitude.”

She is worried that the messages of positive psychology reinforce “a lot of American biases” about how individual initiative and a positive attitude can solve complex problems. Who’s right? This is an experiment we can all do for ourselves. There’s little risk in trying some extra gratitude and kindness, and the results should they materialize are their own reward.

 Read More – What is Happiness in Life / Source: CP

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Eight Steps Toward a More Satisfying Life?

Want to lift your level of happiness? Here are some practical suggestions from University of California psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, based on research findings by her and others. Satisfaction guaranteed at least a temporary boost. In this world, nothing is more precious than happiness.  

1. Count your blessings.

One way to do this is with a “gratitude journal” in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful from the mundane (your peonies are in bloom) to the magnificent (a child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep it fresh by varying your entries as much as possible. Count the blessing of health, job, children, food, God has given you.

2. Practice acts of kindness.

These should be both random (let that harried mom go ahead of you in the checkout line) and systematic (bring Sunday supper to an elderly neighbor). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects—it makes you feel generous and capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and wins you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness all happiness boosters.

3. Savor life’s joys.

Pay close attention to momentary pleasures and wonders. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe strawberry or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade. Some psychologists suggest taking “mental photographs” of pleasurable moments to review in less happy times.

4. Thank a mentor.

If there’s someone whom you owe a debt of gratitude for guiding you at one of life’s crossroads, don’t wait to express your appreciation in detail and, if possible, in person. Say him, a big thank you to acknowledge his help or support in your difficult time. Because, very few peoples come ahead to help you. Talk with him and share your life experiences.

5. Learn to forgive.

Let go of anger and resentment by writing an email or letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on. Anger disturbed your mental peace and let your mind to free from that. It is a great act only brave people can do that. So, learn to forgive.

6. Invest time and energy in friends and family.

Where you live, how much money you make, your job title and even your health have surprisingly small effects on your satisfaction with life. The biggest factor appears to be strong personal relationships. Family should be your most important thing in the world. Spend time with your children, wife, mother and father. They are closest persons living around you. Spending time with them will also relax you and enhance your mood.

7. Take care of your body.

Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying. Your body will move easily in any situation, where most of fat people don’t do that. So, brisk walk is another option to relax your mind and body.

8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships.

There is no avoiding hard times. Religious faith has been shown to help people cope, but so do the secular beliefs enshrined in axioms like “This too shall pass” and “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” The trick is that you must believe them.

Read More - What is Happiness in Life

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3. Boost Your Energy, Immune System, Sexual Function, Strength & Athletic Performance
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5. Read More – What is Happiness in Life / Source: CP