Leisure activities that can improve your professional skills

In our personal life and at work, building and maintaining self-confidence is not always a simple task, on the contrary. Many disruptive elements make us doubt our abilities, intellectual, emotional, or even physical. This is why it is important to remember that we are in perpetual evolution and that we can improve ourselves in all the elements of our life.

There are many tools available to help us progress on the points that we lack, whatever they are. So, of course, to improve your professional skills, online courses of all kinds seem to be the best solution. Whether you want to train in marketing or another subject or you are looking to improve your language level, these learning spaces are undoubtedly an asset for your career. But did you know that you can also train yourself while having fun?

“Soft skills”, these qualities that can make all the difference

Currently, almost everyone speaks the importance of soft skills to make good recruitments in companies. Soft skills, unlike technical skills (also called hard skills), refer to the human and behavioral skills that characterize each individual in their professional life. In other words, it is about your personal qualities that can be assets in your work management. It could be empathy, creativity, stress management, or flexibility, daring, and the ability to solve problems quickly and effectively. Curiosity and a sense of the collective, regularly mentioned on CVs, are also among the 15 most requested soft skills in business.

While some of these traits are certainly a natural part of your profile and your personality, you should know that you can easily turn some of your weak points into strong points as long as you focus on good leisure activities!

Poker, the most complete activity

Year after year, we see it, the champions of poker are more and more of them turn their passion into a real job. That says it all! So, of course, they make this choice above all because the tournaments in which they participate allow them to live comfortably without needing a second activity. But, it is a fact, the practice of poker is a real discipline that requires and which brings to work many qualities. Competitive spirit, patience, capacity for analysis and observation – and notions of mathematics for hard skills – concentration, steel mind, ability to question yourself or even daring, taking risks at the opportune moments, are necessary qualities in any poker player. Qualities that can be tamed part by part and that will undoubtedly serve you at one time or another at work!

If you are a beginner, two options are available to you: You can play with friends or family around a table during a game night, or you can play free online poker on specialized sites, accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While the first option certainly sounds the most user-friendly, the second is definitely the one that will allow you to improve the fastest. By playing against strangers that you do not know and who do not know anything about you, it will be up to you to prove yourself and to show that you deserve the victory, thanks to your qualities of spirit.

Sport, the perfect activity for stress management and a sense of the collective

All professionals (and in particular entrepreneurs) subjected to stress will tell you, sport is an ideal medicine to regain a little calm and serenity in a hectic life. Beyond allowing you to improve your physical health, the practice of sport allows you to take care of your mental health and to improve some of your human skills such as patience, stress management or still surpassing yourself and self-confidence. By seeing how far your mind pushes your body to exceed its limits, you realize that your mind is your ally in all the difficulties encountered daily.

Also, if you take part in a collective activity, it is football, basketball or water polo, or even tennis in doubles, you automatically develop your sense of the collective since you are not playing only for yourself: you are playing to lead the whole team towards Success. However, when you work within a company, you also do your part to pull the whole box up!

Creative activities, ideal for emotional intelligence and vision

Because creativity is an increasingly crucial element at a time when the competition is raging in the job market with candidates applying for positions with increasingly similar profiles, it is important to work on this point daily. When you’re overworked at work, you sometimes feel like you are saturated, lost, no longer having ideas. And that makes us panic even more. The key to breaking this vicious circle is to take the time to let ideas and creativity emerge, opting for gentle and relaxing activities. It can be drawing, painting, sculpture, or even pottery or, why not, knitting or creating jewelry. This type of activity will let your creativity express itself, whether you realize it or not at the start!

Furthermore, through this hobby, you reinforce another important quality in business: vision. It’s simple when you start any work and finish it, you realize that you can perfectly go to the end of things and be satisfied with the result. And that is THE lesson that can give you strength in your professional life!