Turf Network

Life Skills

Critical thinking is about questioning information to find the reasoning of that information and about making informed decisions. This generally starts with the questions:

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

Why?

How?

Then making a prediction on if and how this information may colour the representation of facts.

Click here for a critical thinking cheat sheet

Or here for the critical thinking workbook

You have a problem, imagine your problem. What are you going to do about your problem? Hopefully solve it. But problem solving can be difficult, require creativity and often interpersonal skills.

So what can you do?

First decide what the problem is-

global warming- too big (you have lots of problems)

no recycle bin in the youth centre- good size

Next find out who else is interested in this problem

-Tom doesn't believe in recycling and he empties the bins.

-Sarah is furious

Then think of possible solutions (this is where creativity comes in)

-Talk, write or otherwise communicate to centre leaders

-Get a recycling bin, hope for the best

-Convince Tom

-All of the above

Choose an option or combination

-Convince Tom and get support talking to centre leaders

Make a backup in case it doesn't work out

-Take a bin to Tom with backup from Sarah

Keep trying or compromise

If its not going the way you want return to possible solutions and try again. It could work out or you could be offered a compromise.

If compromise decide if it covers the most important part.

You can practise a bit with problem solving activities

Fail= First Attempt In Learning

There is such a thing as a good failure?

I got caught playing a prank but it was fun

I failed higher biology, TWICE but I had fun and enjoyed the class

I failed chemistry but I seen five colours of fire

I failed to fit in to a youth group but I fit in at a better one

I failed my drivers theory test but I passed hazard perception

But failure doesn't usually feel good so we should look for the positives and accept the things that can't be changed.

Re-framing challenge-

Name your failure

-Failed my drivers theory test

What did you learn?

-I should've read more

Did anything else good come out of it?

-Didn't fail the bit I thought I would

How much does it matter in relation to your life? (big picture)

-Not much

Goals

Setting goals can be a good motivator and it gives a clear direction.

Here is a place to put them.

Game- Adapt to survive-

Stranded player- Can choose 5 things (fishing rod, toaster) that they have and 3 attributes (things that they are) (really fast, can fly, grows plants when they cry) they can always use these.

Using these things they must explain how they would survive on a desert island.

Then ALL OTHER PLAYERS can change one thing at a time (crabs cover the sand, now you're in the ocean).

Stranded Player must explain how they would deal with this, if they get through 10 changes and manage to explain them believably the game moves to the next player starting where the last player left off (space) but with new things and attributes.

Other players should question player 1's solutions and call out anything that wouldn't work.

Okay so priorities have a couple of different categories and we're gonna call them: Life priorities and Day priorities. The general rule is Day priorities should work toward or serve Life priorities and Life priorities always, always take precedent over Day priorities.

I've picked a couple of articles that suggest techniques for each type:

Article about Life priorities

Article about Day priorities

There are a couple of things to add to this:

One good way to write down your priorities is to put them on sticky notes, this way they can be rearranged and thrown away easily.

The Eisenhower matrix is another good tool.

How to decide between Life and Day priorities?

Take the individual activity and put it through the flow chart below

Psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner in 1979 proposed a theory of how a child develops within a set of different systems and how those systems interact with each other to influence the growth of each person. This model shows how a person is influenced and can influence others in their life.

It proposes that every person influences the world they live in through their behaviour and attitude and that the world influences a persons behaviour and attitude through circumstance and other people.

If we consider for a moment this theory to be true, who is it that influences you most in your life?

Who's opinions do you value above others?

How much do they value yours?

How much do you influence others?

Hchokr at English Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

"Ecological Systems Theory Collage" by ChristinaMina is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Above I asked you how much you influence others? Now try considering how you influence others and how they could be influencing you.

Self-control, this is a life skill but there is a great deal of debate on how it can be accomplished. One theory I like is that we can gain self-control through acceptance. The idea is that we have craving and impulses and these aren't really controllable but we can choose to try and ignore them or to accept them.

So I'll give you this, imagine you want a car a Ferrari that's an impulse maybe even a craving. If someone were to stand in front of you and offer the Ferrari however you would question this. Seems like there may be a catch or consequence so you don't act on the impulse.

Now imagine the Ferrari is chocolate, you want it, you can get it, it comes with a consequence. Would you question it?

The theory I like says you should accept that you want it and do nothing about it but if you do act on the impulse forgive yourself and try again.

Time management tools- first you should have priorities for your time. Sitting down once a day to write out all your activities for the day can help reduce stress and prepare your mind for the day ahead. Below are downloadable daily schedules.

Early Bird Night Owl

If your a busy person having a monthly calendar can be useful as well and google calendar is one that is integrated on most electronic devices. For physical monthly scheduling calendars (Microsoft word has templates), notebooks and organisational sheets are good tools.