Life is self-actualization, manifestation of love. Life requires 3 ingredients to exist.
- Sobering. Realization that everything you face or perceive can with a 50/50 chance be salutary or fatal. Ability not to accept and not to reject any phenomenon. Ability not to fight and not to comply. Ability not to do something you don't understand, and not to follow the lead.
- Purity of the attitude towards absolutely everything. Thinking that everything in life exists so we could learn pure attitude towards it. There's no inherent evil in positive or negative. No attitude is required, and no attitude is helpful, if it's not pure. Pure attitude fixes problems we don't even know about.
- Freedom of helplessness. We fool ourselves thinking that we are capable of overcoming evil or of sticking to good (no matter how we define them). Everything depends on everything else and can't exist in absolute isolation. Accepting the danger is the only path past fear and damage.
Since this is about soft skills, I'm not saying you can create biological life by applying the above. What you need the above for is to feel alive.