What Are Lifeskills, as related to stress?

Lifeskills are an assortment of behaviors that can REDUCE stress and help us maintain both physical and psychological health. Some examples of lifeskills are found in people who know how to relax and take care of their physical health. They include knowledge about relationships, communication and expressing feelings.

Lifeskills also include learning how to get control over some of life's stressors through assertiveness, time management, goal setting, and planning. They are tactics that build rather than drain energy.

Remember, in and of itself, stress is neither all good nor all bad. It is a part of life.

What people do with particular triggers (stressors) and their own reactions (stress patterns) differs greatly from individual to individual. What seems stressful to person may not seem stressful to another.

It is believed that people can learn to be skillful in managing stress-producing situation. Some are naturally more successful at it than others. The cave dwellers who survived in primitive eras were probably those who knew best when to fight or flee, therefore living to produce another generation.

Today's successful adults are those people who learn how to respond to stress appropriately in self-nurturing, creative, and assertive ways. Instruction in lifeskills doesn't simply call for "superior coping strategies", like better "pain medicine", but for more resourceful stress management skills.

We need to manage, not cope.