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