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Live Life to the Fullest Through Personal Growth
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all want to have true friends, but the quality of our friends depend on us. If you want to have true friends, you should be a true friend yourself. By being a true friend, people will love to be around you and many of them will eventually become your true friends.
In addition, being a true friend is a good way to solve relationship problems. It’s difficult to change other people, but you can always change yourself. You can then solve the otherwise unsolved problems in relationships.
Here I’d like to share 17 tips to become a true friend. It may take years to learn to apply them but they are essential to boost your relationships.
Here they are:
1. Befriend yourself
Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Do you want to live your life to the fullest? If your answer is yes, then relationships are essential part of it. In fact, relationships should be your top priority. That’s why we all need to learn how to build good relationships. Good relationships not only help us meet our needs but also make our life more fulfilling.
One way to build good relationships is by learning their characteristics. By understanding their characteristics, we will be better equipped to build good relationships in our lives.
Here I use the term “relationships” in its broad meaning. Why? Because the principles of good relationships are universal. They apply not only to romantic relationships, but also to friendship and business relationships.
If you look at the points below, you will see an underlying characteristic of good relationships. Good relationships involve “both sides”. While one side can take initiative, it still requires the other side to make the relationship a good one. Only by working together can a relationship reach its full potential.
Have you ever ridden an emotional roller coaster? When things go right, you are happy and cheerful. But when things go wrong, you feel terrible and frustrated. An emotional roller coaster takes you either high or low.
If you ever experience it, you know how bad it is. You’re standing on an unstable ground where you don’t know what will happen next. Something unexpected could suddenly break your day. Riding an emotional roller coaster will drain your mental energy.
Why does it happen? Looking at my life, one major cause is the unbalance state of our mental portfolio.
Let’s compare it with investing. In investing, you have an investment portfolio which comprises of many types of investments. Your portfolio may consist of large-cap stocks, small-cap stocks, bonds, and other types of investment. It becomes unbalanced when one (or two) type of investments become disproportionately high. Let’s say that 90% of your portfolio consists of small-cap stocks. In such a situation, the performance of your portfolio is very much determined by the performance of small-cap stocks. If they perform well, your entire portfolio will perform well. But if they aren’t, your entire portfolio will suffer.
Note: This is a guest post by Flora Morris Brown from Color Your Life Happy.
This old Girl Scout lyric brings back memories of singing with childhood friends around a glowing campfire. The analogy to precious metals in the song emphasizes the value of friendships.
Every book and article on happiness lists the importance of personal relationships to our joy. It’s not because we get our happiness from others, but because by sharing the happiness we have with others, our own happiness is strengthened. But warm friendships don’t just happen. They must be cultivated and nurtured if they are to be meaningful and long-lasting.
Here are some ways I have maintained friendships through the years. Maybe these can help you too.
1. Send occasional greeting cards, not just at Christmas
Guest posting spots for September are now open and I’d like to invite you to participate. The theme will be Fulfilling Career. It covers topics such as career planning, how to find and follow our calling, and how to get the most out of our work.
Please read Guest Posting Guidelines for more information.
Update: All spots are now filled. Thanks!
After reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and writing a review about it, I was eager to read other books by Dale Carnegie. Since our theme this month is Relationships, the obvious choice is How to Win Friends and Influence People.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the most popular books on human relations. The book has become a classic and remains a bestseller more than 70 years after its initial publication in 1936.
Let’s see inside the book.
Inside How to Win Friends and Influence People
The book is organized into four parts with several chapters within each. Since there are 30 chapters in total, I will only discuss some of them here.
Part One. Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1. “If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”
