Apr 13, 2017 09:44 AM EDT By Khaleb Skye A. Cruz, UniversityHerald Reporter

Abilities may get people to the top, but their characters will keep them there. The University College London proves that life skills and emotional intelligence are more important than books and classrooms. More than 8,000 men and women aged 52 and above participated in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging. In it, researchers aim to analyze the impact of five life skills to promoting the educational and occupational success of people later in life.0

According to Bel Marra Health, the University College London experts found that more life skills mean more chances to have less depression, low social isolation, better health, and stable financial status. Examples of these life skills are persistence, conscientiousness, and self-control. They have also discovered that people with more life skills had smaller waistlines, which means lower cholesterol in the body and lower chances to develop cardiovascular disease.

On the other hand, the group of the respondents who earlier reported significant signs of depression declined by 22.8 percent. However, nearly half of the total samples who showed the least life skills had high levels of loneliness. Now, emotional intelligence can mean the difference between what is socially acceptable behavior and what is not. This is essential in the way people perceive and understand each other, which later affect one's success.

The problem, per IFL Science, is that not everyone knows how to spot emotional intelligence among each other. For one, those who think first before reacting to any situation are considered emotionally intelligent people. Second, individuals who treat problems as challenges rather than dead ends are highly likely to survive the unpredictable cycle of life. Third, interestingly, is that someone who can put his or her situation in someone else's shoes has the highest emotional intelligence.

Well, no matter how academically competent one person is, feelings play vital roles in one's success. With that in mind, the answer to a peaceful and prosperous life, probably, is the ability to regulate the emotions. People who lack life skills and emotional intelligence tend to "just react" without considering the pros and cons of their actions. Thus, the latter behavior is risky to attaining someone's goals.

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