15 Valuable Skills that are going to be your life-long assets
Hello Aluxers, this was originally supposed to be one of the 25 questions in 25 days, but we simply couldn’t under-deliver on this premise, so we made an entire Sunday Motivational article on the 15 valuable skills that you want to have under your belt.
We broke down the most valuable skills anyone can acquire. These particular skills have the largest impact in someone’s both personal and professional life.
Once you acquire them, they stick with your for your entire life and will continuously improve the quality of your existence.
Most of them are difficult to master, but if you do, the rewards are endless.
- Learning how to Learn
- Ability to Adapt, Improvise and Overcome Obstacles
- Meditation
- Ability to Verbalize what You Think and Feel
- Ability to Sell and Negotiate
- Knowing how to Shut Up, Listen and Learn from the Person You Talk To
- Ability to Self-motivate
- Discipline
- Time Management
- Ability to Read, Understand and Memorize
- Ability to Break a Process Down into Smaller Steps
- Self Analysis
- Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
- Self-Respect & Having a Backbone
- Ability to Generate Ideas That Have Value
For those who have the hands of the clock running faster for them, here’s a video you can quickly watch instead of reading the article:
With that said and done, here’s a list of 15 skills that wIll pay off forever:
1
Learning how to Learn
This is the holy grail of skills. Once you realize that every type of skill can be learned if you follow a particular set of steps, the world starts to look a lot like a video game.
You can level up and acquire new abilities since you know what type of effort, time and focus it will take to learn a new skill.
This is one of the most underrated competences one can have, yet one that is likely to have the largest benefit on the long run. When you know how to learn, the only thing left to do is to allocate yourself the time and resources to upgrade your software with whatever skills would make your life better.
2
Ability to Adapt, Improvise and Overcome Obstacles
This isn’t just a Bear Grills catchphrase, it’s actually what allows you to keep moving forward and survive the hard times you’re going to face in your journey.
Only the ignorant is under the impression that he has life all figured out and it’s going to be all straight roads from now onward. That person is in for a massive surprise!
In the words of Mike Tyson:
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth!
Life is not fair, it’s complex and your dedication to keep moving is what allows you to win. Hard times are ahead, people will betray your trust, things will not work out in your favor, you will be put down to the ground, or you probably already have.
Change your attitude, seek alternative routes, get creative and overcome what life throws at you.
If life is getting harder, it means you’re leveling up in the game of life!
3
Meditation
You are not your body, you are not the things you own, you are not what people think of you. You are your mind.
Everything that makes you who you are, resides in that cage made of bone between your ears.
That’s who you are, that’s what makes you, you! Every action, idea, taught, desire, weakness and sorrow begins there.
Over 80% of successful people have a form of daily meditation practice in their lives. Everybody else ignores this as mumbo-jumbo, because they have no idea how to do it and how valuable it actually is.
This is one of the most premium skills anyone can have in their arsenal. If you’re in control of your mind, if you can tame it and train it to make it stronger, you’re on an entire different level than everybody else. You see life clearly, you make better decision and your potential expands while everyone else remains limited.
That’s why earlier this year, we flew all the way to Bali, Indonesia in order to put together a meditation course that’s built for people like us, the Aluxers. Once it’s ready anyone who’s interested in acquiring this valuable skill should be able to go from understanding the basic to actually using meditation in their daily lives for progress.
Resource: 10 Tools Rich People Use
4
Ability to Verbalize what You Think and Feel
You’d be amazed how few people can put into words what they believe, what they feel and what they think about an issue.
This is one of the biggest downfalls of relationships. One of the partners is unable to tell the other person what’s wrong and instead the choose to bury that feeling of sorrow within themselves until it builds up to the inevitable collapse of the relationship.
This goes beyond romantic relationship, even between friends, coworkers and family members.
People are scared to speak up when they feel in a different way and that’s how you end up living a mediocre life, because the path is no longer dictated by what would be sustainable for the long run and instead it’s written by unsatisfactory compromise.
If you’re not 100% honest and involved in the process, it will be easy to let it go in the hopes that something better comes along.
None of the parties win and you’re all just wasting time.
5
Ability to Sell and Negotiate
Everything you do is a sale or a negotiation process. If you want a girlfriend or a boyfriend you need to sell them on the idea of you being the right person for them. You want a job, then you need to be able to sell your skillset over that of other potential hires.
Even to yourself, you have to sell the idea that you can be and do better than you are doing today.
Selling is not a synonym to lying, selling is a rational process in which you breakdown why your solution will add value to the other party.
Selling is pursuing other to join you towards creating better a better outcome for both of you.
This feeds right into the ability to verbalize we mentioned earlier.
Life is a constant negotiation with others, with yourself and even with time itself. Remember what we taught you about trading with the future? That’s a negotiation with time.
It’s a negotiation between effort and satisfaction under the umbrella of time.
By doing things that people won’t right now, you are negotiating a future where you can enjoy a life that is unavailable to others.
Selling can be taught and it will prove to be highly useful to have in your utility belt. If you want to go deeper with this, we recommend you pick up Daniel Pink’s book: To Sell is Human. In it, you’ll find out what it takes to make children act in a way that you desire, how to understand what the other person is thinking and come up with a solution that satisfies both parties.
We know the audiobook is rather expensive at $25, so here’s what we’re going to do: if you go to alux.com/freebook and sign up, you can get “To Sell is Human” for free courtesy of our partnership with Audible. Want to get what you want in life, then it’s time to start selling!
6
Knowing how to Shut Up, Listen and Learn from the Person You Talk To
Isn’t that right Aluxers? How many people do you recall that never know when to shut up?!
If you’re the one talking, you’re not growing, because you are putting out what you already know. The only way for you to improve is to actively listen.
Really listening to someone else, is different from just hearing them. It involves paying attention, creating a mental blueprint of the information which you can access if you need to. Always assume the person you’re talking to knows something you don’t.
Don’t get blinded by arrogance. It’s more important to grow than give the impression that you already know everything. That’s what differentiates the REAL from the PRETENDERS.
7
Ability to Self-motivate
There will be days when you don’t feel like getting out of the bed. A lot of them. There will be days when you don’t want to get back to the grind. There are days when you feel like you’re not making much progress.
Those are the days that make the difference between those who are going to make it and those who will find excuses for their failures.
How you make it happen, how you convince your body and mind to move in accordance with what you know is better, than whatever alternative might be on the table, resides in yourself and is called willpower.
The level of self-motivation someone can deploy is directly correlated to the following: his or her level of confidence, the positive outlook on the outcome, the quality of the goal and the environment they created for themselves.
8
Discipline
Building up from the previous point and we end up with discipline. If you’ve been following this channel for a while, you know that: Success is the sum of small actions repeated over extended periods of time.
No matter how small of a step you make every day, give it enough time and you will reach your destination.
People are not consistent, they don’t run the course, they don’t play the long game and get distracted by shiny objects. Don’t be like them! The tentation is big to jump on a new fad and start over, but even if you start making some progress there, another shiny object will pass you by and you’ll want to follow it. That’s what keeps people from making real progress.
We believe everyone’s life can be dramatically improved for the better if they get better at discipline. That’s why a while back we uploaded one of the most valuable articles on our website. It could’ve easily been put behind a paywall because of the value in it, yet we chose to give it to our community for free.
The article is called: 15 Steps to master Self-Discipline. The 50 day challenge in it will change the way you live.
9
Time Management
Success in life is determined by the ability to make use of the resources you have on hand and time is one of them.
We all wake up with the same 24 hours in a day, but when we close our eyes at night, some people have made more progress than others.
Simply put, some people use their time efficiently, while others choose to waste it. The first person will live a great life while the other one will get angry at god for making life unfair.
Every day you vote with your time of how you wish your life to be. Do you choose to watch tv, or pursue your goals. It’s a simple choice and your current reality is the reflection of the choices you’ve made with your time. Hope that when you look around you, you are pleased with what you see!
10
Ability to Read, Understand and Memorize
To this day we still can’t believe how few people are aware of how powerful books are. The fact that you can learn from someone’s entire life experience in just a couple of days is the biggest knowledge leverage available out there.
It’s never been easier to get access to valuable information, strategies and advice. A single book can change your life. Once page can spark an idea in you that will transform your entire existence. Read more, but read to understand, read to comprehend and store that knowledge. Make use of it in your life.
Read for self-development not for entertainment. Find books that have someone’s struggles embedded in the pages and the solutions they used to overcome them. In a years time, the average american will spend over 42 hours in traffic alone. That’s more than 1 work-week sitting in a car looking at other miserable people. Use that time to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Use your downtime to make yourself better at reading skills.
Don’t know where to start? We’ve uploaded several articles with lists of books for specific situations you might find yourself in life. Just search for “Alux Books” and start figuring out what you need help with. Even better, because of the deal we have with Audible, when you go to our alux.com/freebook page you may get 1 audiobook for free, if there is an active offer at that time.
The average CEO reads over 50 books per year, while the average person barely reads 1. How many books did you finish this year?
Resource: 15 Books Bill Gates Thinks Everyone Should Read
11
Ability to Break a Process Down into Smaller Steps
This is one of the reasons we’ve managed to build a successful company. Most people look at the end result.. “I want to have a million dollars”, but they never break it down.
What does it take to get there. How many sales do I need to make? What needs to happen every month, every week and every day, so that at the end of the year I can hit that goal.
That’s what successful people do. They do the math! They start breaking the goal down. That’s what plans are.
If you’re not breaking a goal down into milestones you’re just dreaming. It’s wishful thinking.
That’s why people in STEM fields are massively outperforming everyone else. Because they are taught how to deconstruct an issue and solve it in a step by step manner. You never learn this from studying literature. It’s a distinct type of thinking which gives you an edge over everyone else.
12
Self Analysis
You can only improve what you can measure!
Almost every successful person is tracking their progress, no matter what field or industry they’re in.
You want to lose weight, start documenting your weight every day. Very soon you’ll realize the impact of what you eat and your level of activity has on the number shown on the scale. Once you see what’s good for you, you’ll do more of it and less of the bad things.
It’s pretty obvious, yet most of you do not track anything in your life. We have analytics for EVERYTHING we want to improve!
This analysis allows you to have a clear picture of what you’re dealing with. From your actions to your feelings, it can all be analyzed.
13
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Like it or not, you will have to deal with people. We are all part of a giant social mechanism that relies on us working cohesively together. Emotional Intelligence allows you to have a smooth ride while navigating these dangerous waters.
People who lack emotional intelligence, grow frustrated, think everyone hates them and believe other people are unjustifiably getting promoted in life. Emotional Intelligence is a skill. Is your ability to interact with people, to understand them, talk to them and motivate them.
We are not machines, we have good days and bad days, we have different sets of values and respond to different triggers. Emotional Intelligence allows you to see and understand the differences between individuals. People with high EQ actually outperform those with a high IQ in life, because of this. Others simply want them to succeed more.
14
Self-Respect & Having a Backbone
Speaking of values. Do you know what you stand for? Who you are as a person? Once you do, you can start acting accordingly.
You will stand your ground, you will not let others walk all over you.
People treat you the way you treat yourself, not the way you treat others!
Those who have a high degree of self-respect also happen to be the ones society respect the most.
It’s always fascinating to see someone who speaks out when things aren’t going in the right direction, someone who calls out the unjust. These are the people who influence the world and through their actions change it for the better. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Malala Yousafzai and people like them all act by having a backbone and not selling your ideology for 30 pieces of silver.
15
Ability to Generate Ideas That Have Value
We’ve already established that your mind is the most powerful weapon you have in your arsenal. Think of your mind like a large piece of fertile land in which you can plant crops. The mind doesn’t care what you plant in it, it will do its job and grow that crop.
Some people plant useful trees while others fill their mind with weeds.
If you can take care of your mind, you will be able to fruit quality ideas that will bring joy, success and fulfillment in your life. The same with a tree, it will not bear fruit overnight, it will take time and nourishment for the tree to grow. Keep watering it and giving it what it needs and you’ll soon be able to come up with more and better ideas.
Ideas are free and a single idea can make you rich, successful and happy. A string of good ideas can make life easier for you and can slowly move you in the right direction.
The goal is to focus on ideas and skills that have value!
None of these skills is easy to master, but once you do, you will reap benefits for the rest of your life from them, so it pays greatly to invest in acquiring as many of them as you can.
Which of these 15 are you currently trying to master? Let us know in the comments and we’ll be sure to join the conversation!
