Personal Skills for Body and Mind

Perhaps the most fundamental of all skills are those concerned

with self-preservation - that is, staying healthy in both body and
mind. This section of SkillsYouNeed covers some ideas that
can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle. Our pages will also
help to make sure that you are able to feel good about yourself.
Without good personal (or intra-personal) skills, you are less
likely to be able to develop good interpersonal, presentation or
leadership skills.

We aim to provide practical advice about personal skills which

can enhance your mental and physical health and wellbeing.

All of the information found on SkillsYouNeed is, to the best of our knowledge,
correct. We are, however, not a replacement for professional healthcare
providers. If you are worried about your physical or mental health then seek
professional medical advice.

Learning about Personal Development

Personal development skills are the skills you need to enable you to set
personal goals and to achieve personal empowerment.
You can build a strong and effective skill-set through personal development,
and these will help you to make relevant and positive choices and decisions in
the future.
Whether you want to start with Keeping Your Mind Healthy or Caring for your
Body, there are plenty of ideas in this section to help.

Personal Development Skills

Our pages on Personal Development and Personal Empowerment provide a
framework for setting personal goals and achieving your potential in life.
Become more self-aware, and learn to recognise your strengths and weaknesses and those of
other people, for example, by developing habits of Reflective Practice.
Learn how to use language positively to encourage self-empowerment in our pages on Positive
Thinking and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and also to help empower others. Remove the
barriers to learning and developing yourself by discovering the Importance of Mindset and start
to develop new skills today. And if you find personal change hard, take a look at our pages
on Personal Change Management Skills and Self-Motivation for some ideas to get you
started.

Character-Building Skills
Our section on Character-Building Skills focuses heavily on
those perhaps old-fashioned terms character and virtue, and
their increasing importance in todays world.
Learn about the importance of Emotional Intelligence and Managing Emotions in gaining
mastery over yourself, and being able to understand yourself and others.
Managing your emotions effectively is crucial to learning to live well. For more about this, see our
pages on Goodness: Learning to Use Your Moral Compass and A Framework For Learning
To Live Well.
Ethics play an important role in life, although sometimes in the modern world its hard to
remember. Find more about this in our pages on Living Ethically, Ethical
Consumption and Ethics and Goodness in Professional Life.
You can also find out more about individual character traits, or virtues on our individual pages.
For example, you may want to explore issues of Self Control, Developing Resilience, Being
Good Tempered, or even Friendliness or Compassion. There are plenty more to explore and
help you to feel good about yourself.
How we feel about ourselves impacts on many aspects of our lives. By Building
Confidence and Self-Esteem, we can overcome barriers and learn to accept our own strengths
and weaknesses. Further your understanding of self-esteem and confidence by reading our
pages on Personal Presentation, how we present or market ourselves to others, and Personal
Appearance, how we dress and look after our physical appearances.