Life Skills before Life Slips The Secret for 21st Century Kids

for the ones who know me my name is

kamal neet singh

and for the ones who don’t know me my

name is still commonly sing

the name doesn’t change right now i

invite the person sitting in your seat

to participate in a very very powerful

exercise which is going to make a huge

difference

in your life are you ready are you ready

now i’m sure all of you have seen a gun

right so make a gesture like a gun

make a gesture like a gun don’t worry we

are not doing any terrorist

activity make a make a gesture like a

gun

join your thumbs bring it right in front

of your face

separate it around your shoulders

and we will do a count of eight wherein

on one it will go up and two it will

come down and we’ll keep doing that are

you ready

one two one two one

two one two now a lot of you did not

realize

all of you just did bhangra right and

uh is a very very popular dance from all

across

the world and comes from india now i see

a i see a big smile on your face

and now that i see that i have some

questions for you though i know this is

not a classroom but i still got some

questions for you are you ready

how many of you would want your kids to

be really successful or you would want

your nieces and nephews to be very

successful

raise your left arm up how many of you

would want your

kids or nieces or nephews to be good

human beings raise your right arm up

and how many of you would want your kids

nieces or nephews to be successful

as well as good human beings raise both

your arms up

you greedy people you look arrested now

everybody wants their kids to be really

happy successful and good human beings

in fact every parent every teacher every

educator

has this one goal that you know my child

should be really successful and

eventually become a good human being

isn’t it now

if that’s the goal what are we really

doing about it

are we really doing something about it

or are we just

leaving it to a chance i would want you

to recall the word chance

are we leaving the success of our child

to chance

are we leaving their happiness to chance

are we leaving they becoming good human

beings to a chance

i would really want you to consider this

and let me tell you a quick story

on a big mountain site they’re laid

a nest with four big eagle eggs four big

eagle eggs

and one fine day the mountain was rocked

with an earthquake

and one of the eggs tumbled down the

mountain

and went down the valley and at the

bottom of the valley there was a poultry

farm

now as the egg entered the poultry farm

the chickens noticed

that it’s an egg that has fallen from

the mountain and there was an old hen

with her with with its intuitiveness

decided that we must as a family we must

as a chicken family

should take care of this egg and all of

them move towards the egg

and they knew that the egg will soon

hatch

one fine day the egg hatched

and a beautiful eagle was born but the

eagle

took birth according to eagle in a

chicken family

and all it saw around was chickens

now it realized that there is some

difference but

the the eagle was not really able to

identify because all it’s over sticking

around

now one fine day the chicken family was

playing

and the eagle saw eagles flying in the

air

and this eagle looked at the chickens

and said you know i wish

i could fly like these birds in the air

and listening to this all the chickens

loved and they said

you you are a chicken behave like one

you can never sword in the sky and over

a period of time this kept on repeating

and the eagle believed

that it’s actually a chicken and over a

period of time

left its dream of flying and doing

things beyond its comfort zone

and there came a time one fine day

that eagle died as a chicken

the eagle died as a chicken not even

knowing that it was an eagle

now when you listen to this story and i

would want you to connect this to

our kids our nieces our nephews you know

younger lots in the

in the country and in the world a lot of

times

they know that they can do so much

around them around their life

but people from outside the outside

voices

force them to become a chicken every

child

every child has an eagle within them

if only we give them the wings to fly if

only we give them

the wings to fly now if you if you look

at this

uh this gentleman frederick douglass uh

put it in a very very beautiful way and

and i’ve been spending all these years

working with kids and that’s my mission

that you know

we should make a difference at an early

age frederis douglas says that it is

easier to

prepare strong children than to repair

broken men

now what what it means is that whatever

can be done at an early age

and if it is done the right way it has a

long-term impact

and science says that whatever goes into

the mind of a child till 16

serves till 60. so 16 years they haven’t

impacted 60 years

now let me show let me show you a very

small demonstration

i don’t have a magic for you but i have

a small demonstration

okay now you see this stick right

now connect this with the life of a

child

connected with the environment connected

with what a child goes through

now imagine if i if i bend the stick

if i bend the stick

now it will never come back to its

original position it will never come

back to it so

how hard i may try it does not come back

to its original position now what i mean

by this is

that when a child is struggling

and something goes wrong in a child’s

life it’s very difficult for a child to

come back to its

original potential and that’s what

beautifully was put by frederick

douglass

and and that’s what i wanted to

demonstrate now

some of you were expecting that i’ll

probably pull out a parrot or a pigeon

uh i did not have that now uh

each of us each of us had

you know has a child within us and if

you look back at our own our own life

how many of you would agree that you

know when we were young

had we had the right skill set the right

mindset at an early age it would have

made a difference

yes and i see a lot of hands going up

now

now that did not happen for us

it is important that we ensure that our

kids our generation across the world the

younger generation

studying in the classrooms or maybe the

play rooms who will eventually enter the

live rooms and the boardrooms

they’re very well taken care of now how

do we really do that

and before that let’s understand that

where do we stand today

where do we really stand today who says

that

depression is on the rise depression is

on the rise

about 264 million people across the

world suffer from depression

264 million people it’s not a joke

in india one in four teenagers

one in four teenagers suffer from

depression

that is 25 percent one in four

suicides are shooting through the roof

suicide is known to be the number

two leading cause of death across the

world

between the age group of 15 to 29 years

and every single year about eight lakh

people

lose their life because of suicide eight

black people 800 000 people

in india alone very unfortunately

india has the highest suicide rate

amongst the 10 southeast asian countries

10 southeast asian countries and we are

leading for a very wrong reason

and you know what all of this begins at

an early age

if that tender rage if the early age

things can be taken care of

a lot of issues including depression

including suicide including anxiety

including

bullying can be taken care of if only we

start early

you would all agree that you know if you

look at your own life

and you see kids around you when was the

last time that you wanted to say

no but you ended up saying a yes when

was the last time then you when you

would see a child around who really

wanted

to do something but he held himself back

when was the last time when you saw a

child

who really wanted to look at things in a

positive way but then he could not

really focus on the positivity and

focus on the negativity when was the

last time

you saw a child fully expressing the way

he wanted to and not the way the society

wanted him to

that’s where we stand today and i have

gone through this stage as a child i was

shy

under confident introvert and i did not

have belief in myself and that led to a

decision in my life and i wanted to take

a career decision

i decided to take up kitchen as a work

department i became a cook

just because i wanted to hide behind the

kitchen so that

i don’t have to interact with people now

if

i had been taught the right things at

the right age i might have had a very

very different decision about my life

now this is where we really stand today

now we want our kids to be the best

maybe in academics but what about

academics will come to an after a

certain age but then

eventually they will step into the real

life are we really preparing them for

the real life

you know you ask parents when they want

their kids to be

a good chess player they get him a chess

coach

when when parents want their kids to be

good at basketball

they get them a basketball coach when

they would want them to be good at

swimming they get them a swimming coach

and of course a lot of coding is being

talked about when they would want them

to be good at coding they gave them a

coding coach

but what about decoding what about all

the wrong codings that has

gone inside what about decoding and if

you don’t decode at the right time at

the right age

there are repercussions that they will

pay for a long period of time

you and i we’ve got the same goal be the

teacher be the parent be an educator

everybody wants that their kids should

not go through what they went through i

don’t want the kids to go through what i

went through

and a lot of times i see kids in the

classrooms

and i ask them that how many of you

believe that you will be really

successful in life

the hands don’t go up when i ask them

that how many of you would really want

to be successful

i see about 40 hands going up in the

classroom but when i ask them

that how many of you are dead sure that

you are going to be really successful in

your life

just about seven eight hands go up just

about 20 percent you know because

something

comes in between something holds them

back if we do not take care of those

issues

those minor issues they will become the

major issues in their life

and you know kids have been taught to

look at life as

a to z you know if you ask them you ask

any child you know

can you say a to z in less than five

seven seconds and each child will be

able to say you know a b c d e f g h i j

k l m n o p q r s t

u v w x y said i’m sure you’re thinking

that this has become a mini classroom

but life does not work like a to z

life works in a reverse way life throws

reverse

life can backfire life can demand a zed

to wear from you

our other kids prepared for zyx wv uts

rqp o

m lkji htf ba

that’s what they really got to be

prepared for because real life

does not work in a linear way it can it

can work in any way

so what is the real solution what is it

that we can do

all these years i’ve been working with

teachers kids and parents and uh

i see that life skills preparation for

life

is the real solution that will take care

of our kids in the real way

which will really make a difference in

their life

i feel that we should be preparing kids

for the big exam

called life and not just the academic

exam

and how do we really do that so uh

now look at life skills as something it

is as good as oxygen uh to a body

and it is it is equivalent to success

life skills is equivalent to success

and and let me let me give you a very

brief

idea on the same who talks about it

world economic forums talk

they talk about it unicef talks about it

but only talking about it does not help

it has to be implemented at the ground

level

so that each child should should be in a

position

to make a huge difference to his own

life and to

lives of people around him so what life

skills are we really talking about we’re

talking about

you know social skills you know how many

of you remember that uh you were shy

during your school days

i see a lot of hands going up did

anybody come to you and a lot of people

would

actually laugh on i was loved at and

how many who came to you and said you

know hey you are shy

let me help you hardly any support back

then but now things are happening

uh we’re talking about emotional skills

we’re talking about thinking skills

these are the skills that will really

make a difference in a child’s life

and let me let me give you uh an example

how many of you have been ever have how

many of you have been rejected in some

way or the other

married people okay so uh otherwise also

uh rejection is a part of life but

freedom from fear of rejection is a life

skill that each child must be taught

because

rejections will happen how will the kids

handle rejection is going to play an

important part

we have to make decisions at every

single point in life i made a wrong

decision in my life because i was not

very clear

how many of you think that making

decisions is an important part of our

life

but have we been taught as to how to

make decisions do we know of a decision

making formula that’s the need of the

hour

that’s what the kids need to learn you

know with the changes in technology with

life moving so fast there is so much of

stress

how many of you are stressed how many of

you are stressed

married people only raise their hands

okay i’m just joking so uh

stress can come from different walks of

life but it is it is our duty to

prepare the kids to handle stress

because i don’t believe that stress will

not happen it will happen but it is

important so that the kids can

uh deal with it what are the other

things that uh

kids need to learn they need to learn

about emotions management they need to

learn about problem solving we all face

problems all day long

uh kids need to learn about the art of

problem solving

how many of you have been criticized

criticized

i see a lot of hands going up everybody

almost everybody gets criticized for

something or the other the way you talk

the way you walk

something or the other but it’s

important that kids be taught

the art of handling criticism very very

crucial kids must learn how many of you

procrastinate i think majority i see and

i

can i can think about the morning alarms

you know everybody uses the snooze

button i think that’s

that’s in a way it’s procrastination uh

helping kids to learn about

procrastination is an important aspect

uh saying no a lot of times we say

yes and then inside we feel guilty why

did i say yes when i really wanted to

say no so that’s a life skill that

kids must be taught at an early age

handing peer pressure it’s going to be

all around a lot of kids

data says that a lot of kids use you

know use tobacco they use alcohol they

they do things that they don’t want to

do but they do it under peer pressure

isn’t it important that we teach our

kids to learn and manage

peer pressure money next subject how

many of you would want to make some

money

i’m not giving it to you everybody would

want to make some money to contribute in

their life in whatever way

but our other kids are the kids

taught about money uh not really they

get out of the

school and the college and they’re

wondering how do i really make money uh

financial wisdom is a crucial skill that

each child must be taught

failing how many of you failed in life

everybody

but a lot of kids when they fail they

they lose hope they lose heart and that

also becomes a huge

reason for depression and anxiety and so

many other things

learning to fail and fail forward is a

life skill that

we must teach our kids very very crucial

uh confidence and you know we are going

through a huge crisis pandemic is going

on

and keeping being optimistic and you

know

having the uh having confidence during

crisis is a skill that our kids need to

learn early

how many of you have been bullied my god

i think

looks like that we’re all in the same

boat dealing with bullies

you know there are better ways to deal

with the bully than to you know hit and

probably

abuse learning to deal with bullies is

an important skill that kids must be

taught at an early age

teamwork communicate with anyone

anywhere anytime you know these are the

skills that our kids must be taught at

an early age and if you don’t

teach them these you know they will

probably contribute to one of the

numbers that i was speaking about early

we don’t want them to go into depression

we don’t want them to go into anxiety

we don’t want them to feel uh left out

what you and i could not do we must

ensure that our kids should be able to

do

everything that they want to i don’t

want the kids to go through what i went

through and i would want to leave you

on a final note let’s prepare our kids

for the real exam called life and not

just

academics thank you very much