Friends For Life
By Janean Nusz
Friends, who needs them? According to various studies on friendship,
just about everyone!
Friendships can add years to your life, and even increase success. Having
good friends can reduce stress, increase self-esteem and improve quality
of life. Friends can help to soothe a broken heart and lessen clinical
depression. Friends can share the joy of an unbelievable accomplishment
and add meaning to the normal, everyday duties of life.
Having friendships is, therefore, vitally important to both adults and children. But how can you cultivate these meaningful relationships in your life? As the old adage goes, to have a friend, you’ve got to be a friend. But what, exactly, constitutes being a friend?
First and foremost, to be a good friend, you have to be able to listen. Friends want to share things with you, they want to hear about your successes and triumphs, your low-points and strange happenings, and your everyday life, but friends also want to tell you about their life, too. Being a good, sincere listener can improve your relationships with your friends and bring you closer together. When you listen, be sure to be a sympathetic listener, rather than a critical one. Often, when friends are too judgmental, they unintentionally instill a distance to their relationships with others. Frequently, the route to being a sympathetic listener only involves one step: try to understand where your friend is coming from instead of imposing your own point-of-view on their situation. In other words, don’t judge your friends by your own experiences, but by theirs.
A second requirement to making, and keeping, friends is trust and, subsequently, honesty. Trust and honesty are two of the most meaningful traits to a good friendship. If your friends can honestly trust you, they will often reveal far more of their innermost thoughts and feelings. In being able to trust one another, good friends are secure in the knowledge that when they are at their most vulnerable, sharing confidences and stepping out of their public persona, that vulnerability will not go further. They are able to entrust you with what they view as their weaknesses, simply because they are confident that those weaknesses will not be shared with others. In order to have a good relationship with a friend, your friendship must contain elements of both truth and trust.
The third ingredient in having wonderful friendly relationships is similarity. Most often, but not always, friends are made because they share traits with you. They may share the status of parenthood, or simply share your workplace with you. Or, the sharing could be a personality trait, such as shyness or being overly addicted to coffee! Whatever the similarity, it is important to remember to keep in mind what originally drew you to your friend in the first place, and vice versa.
Friends need to know you're there for them when they need you. So, go ahead, enrich your life by having a lot of good friends. When has reducing your stress and adding a few extra years to your life ever been easier? And, smile a lot while you’re doing it – everyone likes a friend-ly person!
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