Your teenage years are some of the most formative moments in your life. You get to meet people that will always be by your side, slowly discover bits and pieces of your passion, advance your academic understanding, and experience growth and personal development like never before. Needless to say, the time you spend as a teenager marks both a moment in your life to explore and the last stepping stone before young adulthood.
However, with most, if not all, classes held online and the vast majority of teenagers bunkered down at home for health and safety reasons, the opportunities you’d typically encounter while studying are now limited to your home. With that said, it’s only natural for teenagers to lean towards relaxing and leisure during their free time since there aren’t any extra-curricular activities you can usually join. So, to make the best use of what limited opportunity we have, now’s the chance to start picking up practical life skills!
Make Mistakes Now. Reap The Success Later
Yes, instead of lounging and playing, any free time you can get your hands on should be put toward learning a practical life skill that will prove useful in the long-term. In doing so, you can make all the mistakes now, learn from them, and come out of this new normal successful and equipped with the necessary skills to become independent.
#1 Learn How To Cook
Firstly, one of the essential life skills to pick up at an early age is learning how to cook. Sure, for now, you can depend on your parents and older siblings to help around the kitchen and whip up some tasty dishes, but there will come a time when you need to be your own chef. When you’re older, your parents won’t be able to go to your home and cook good food every single day, and always ordering take-out isn’t sustainable either. So, be the bigger person and learn your way around the kitchen.
- Make What You Love: For starters, you can begin by learning stuff you enjoy eating, so don’t hesitate to ask for help from your parents or to consult a good old-fashioned cookbook. After that, you can move on to easy dinner recipes and volunteer to cook for the family every night. Over time, you’ll become proficient in the field of cooking and might even discover a future as a master chef.
- Living On Your Own: Once you start living on your own, money management and good budgeting will become things you need to consider daily. And, with the help of your cooking skills, you can easily cut down your food expenses without having to sacrifice flavor and taste. Plus, your friends and room-mates will enjoy the food you make too.
#2 Personal Healthcare & Basic First Aid
Now that we’ve experienced just how severe a global pandemic can be, it’s safe to say that we should all do our part in learning about personal healthcare & basic first aid. As a general rule of thumb, it’s always good to know how to take care of ourselves and grasping just the basics. Plus, there’s no telling if we’ll ever be in a life-threatening situation that requires first-aid, so these things wouldn’t hurt to learn either.
- Value Your Safety: Anything can happen, and in a blink of an eye, you might find yourself coming face to face with a serious injury, a wound, or someone who might need your help. So, learning the ins and outs of personal healthcare & basic first-aid can become a lifesaver for you and the people around you. And, if you find a passion for helping others, you can pursue nurse assistant classes or any medical field.
#3 Investing In Communication Skills
Next up, while we all love to talk with our friends and have fun conversations with the family, we also need to invest in our communication skills that will prove useful in showing empathy, negotiation, and expressing our opinions in the future. You see, a normal conversation is leagues away from what a professional conversation feels like, and no matter what career path we plan on taking, good communication skills will always be critical.
- Speaking Confidently: If you’ve ever been a victim of freezing up during a class report, then don’t worry because we’ve all been there. Lucky for us, things like that can be worked and improved upon with a bit of effort. We all have our methods, whether through talking in front of a mirror, practicing our lines, or listening to other great speakers. What matters most is that we value the skill of speaking confidently and actively work our way towards achieving the same standard.
#4 A Creative Outlet
Last but not least, apart from all the soft and technical skills mentioned, you shouldn’t forget to indulge in a creative outlet. You see, life is also about balance, and we all need a time and place where we can properly express ourselves and let go of the stress that bothers our minds. In fact, some students are already finding online classes quite stressful, so just imagine what it would be like dipping your toes into your future career! So, whether it’s playing the guitar, learning to draw, or picking up a thing or two about videography and editing, a creative outlet is just as important as any life skill out there.
Refocus Your Priorities
Overall, instead of doing nothing and wasting your time on things that won’t equate to anything in the long term, we strongly recommend picking up practical life skills as early as today. And, by refocusing your priorities now, you’ll get to experience life more vividly in the future.
