5 Life Skills That Need Just a Spare Hour in Your Day

Maybe you don't have it. Those spare sixty minutes to learn a few life skills.

Maybe, you are unpacking after a vacation. Or, cleaning house after a raucous party. Learning a new skill can take a raincheck now. But, read on if rest and decluttering aren't on your list yet. A personal makeover without too much of effort is.

The good news is that you can spark self-improvement in just one hour too.

You could be in an airport lounge or stuck at a dentist's appointment. There are wasted minutes lying around. Just pick them up and roll them into a useful hour packed with some knowledge of a life skill that you may need at work or at home.

Today, we focus on five short Udemy courses that take an hour or a bit more to finish. But, they can leave a positive spillover into different areas of your life in the coming days. This is part of our continuing series on the best Udemy courses you can benefit from.

Life Skill #1: Dress to Kill -- A Men's Primer on Style and Fashion

Key Lesson: Learn confidence tricks from your own sense of style.

There's so much to look at beyond black, grey, and blue. The men of today don't need to keep just the classics in their cupboard. The internet helps to dress us up. You can style your own look and it doesn't matter if you are chubby, short, muscular, or slim. The only push to dress well is this -- the way you dress affects your mind.

Science calls it "enclothed cognition". Psychologists say that our mind is influenced when we put on certain clothes. Some of the same psychology principles go into this course. You will learn to spot your sartorial weaknesses and the ways to correct them. And you just have to give up a single episode of Twin Peaks for it.

Any women reading this might want to try the How To Become A Stylish And Well-Dressed Woman course. It clocks in at four hours.

Life Skill #2: Happiness Hormones -- Secrets to Live in a Beautiful State

Key Lesson: Learn powerful habits, routines, and best practices to control your mood.

Happiness also ebbs and flows like your confidence. But, happiness is a compass, not a destination. You have to keep working at it 24-hours because mood crushers are always around the corner. Agree that life is both good and bad and you are good to take on any day with a little help from the science of joy.

Mathieu Ricard is sometimes (often wrongly) called the "happiest person the planet". The Buddhist monk and biochemist says that we can train our minds with the right habits to reach a sense of well-being. This one-hour course is all about habits like kindness, gratitude, exercise, and sleep that help to release the right feel-good chemicals in our body.

Yes, it will take a lot of practice beyond that single hour. But, all habits need the push of routine. Use this course to put it all together.

Life Skill #3: The Manual Labor of Zen Meditation

Key Lesson: How to start a meditation practice when you can't sit still.

Very few people can sit still let alone hush their thoughts. It's like bridling two horses which want to run away in opposite directions. A different type of Zen meditation might be the solution you need to headstall both your mind and body. And it is easy to work a quick meditation session into your day.

This one-hour course will introduce you to the idea of mindfulness and how you can use it to relax your mind or body. It's all in the breath. Gordon Greene is the head priest of The Spring Green Dojo who wants you to learn Zen meditation through the "physicality" of everyday actions. He also wants to train your mind for compassion when you are ditch deep in stress.

It's hard work. But it is not mystical. Bring this skill into your life.

Life Skill #4: The Habit Journal™ -- How To Achieve Any Goal

Key Lesson: Learn how to use a simple daily journal to support your habits.

If you can write a sentence, you can start a daily journal. The journaling habit has got a lot of press in recent times. We can't dismiss it as a fad because journal writing has been one of the oldest hobbies since paper was invented. Perhaps, William Wordsworth said it best -- "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart".

The Habit Journal course might seem like an advertisement for the stationary product. But, there are a lot of free takeaways from the course. The core one is to use the habit of writing down things to build other powerful habits. The journal will help you plan, do, and reflect as you work on adopting new habits.

You don't need to buy a Habit Journal because you can just start with the PDF version of the Journal that is free for students.

Life Skill #5: Assertiveness Basics -- The 50-minute Communication Guide

Key Lesson: How to capture attention with assertiveness.

Can introverts rule the world? Abraham Lincoln and Bill Gates certainly did. Both mastered the skills and guile of communication. And they didn't lead by only saying "no" to everything. After all, assertiveness is just the ability to behave and communicate with others in a dignified and confident way. Assertiveness is pre-requisite to air your views to the world.

It comes in handy in every situation -- from molding your children to surviving in a work meeting. And it can be learned.

The course will help you find the middle ground between passive and aggressive communication. At the end of an hour, you won't get all the keys to your confidence but you can walk away with better persuasion skills. The course also touches on non-verbal ways to communicate with the right body language, and that's just as important when you want to create a first impression.

So, try the course and see if it helps you expand your comfort zone, resolve conflicts, and beat back stress.

What are the Other Skills for Self-Reliance?

It is a long list. But these five skills will find a high place in any list of skills that every person should know. It is easy to go through the one-hour courses, but you can only get better at them if you work on them every day.

These skills are not taught in schools, so you have to learn them yourself. It's worth the effort because it loops back to the whole purpose of self-reliance -- confidence.

Take your pick of these Udemy courses. As you know, every paid course on Udemy comes with: