Who Are Your Friends? They Matter!
Everyone needs someone. Life is a connection of people with every one needing every other person. You were created with dependency in mind. Every person arrives life with a handicap. This is why we need people, but we don’t just need anyone but we need good friends.
Friends are helpers. They share in our dreams, hopes and aspirations. They share a good part of our lives, a part that our family members may not be privileged to share. Some persons have found their friends more comforting than their siblings or parents.
Developing friendship is an important asset we need to develop as it helps us create the relationships that attract the things we don’t have to ourselves. Many persons have enjoyed opportunities because they connected with a friend.
But friends have also been the reason many have failed. People have been initiated into cults, had their lives short-lived, lost opportunities and gone insane because of their friends. You don’t want to have friends who will negatively influence you.
Our choice of friends matter. The quality of your life will at some point in your life be dependent on the quality of your friends. You can check around your life and find some of your friends who have influenced you. You certainly have testimonies of so and so person who changed your viewpoint.
Life arrives with its ups and downs. There are people who come around us as friends only in our good times. They arrive only to eat from our bank of resources and they’d disappear when they have had their fill. Those are not friends.
You need people who will hang with you when its good, helping you do the most with your good opportunities. And you need people when its bad helping you make the most of your bad situations. If you’ve had people who have weathered the storms with you, those are true friend.
I always remember how helpful my friends have been. I remember James Nta Benjamin, Akwa Anobejah, Amos Omini amongst others who played helpful roles during my undergraduate years and outside it. They rocked.
Through life, we need people who appreciate us not because we have resources but because we are who we are, people who share our hopes and aspirations and who are willing to play a part to see it happen.
What qualities should you look out for in your friends? Most young people aren’t decisive about those they keep as friends. They’ve had many heartbreaks in friendships that they have decided that they’d not run anymore with people. They choose the solo path.
If you’ve gone through a heartbreaking experience from people you trusted and entrusted your life to, this shouldn’t be the reason you should distrust others who need your good hands of friendship. But you want to be able to define the quality of your friendships so that you don’t have another heartbreaking experience.
Having quality friendships matter! It’s not just about having a long list of friends but it’s about having friends that will matter when it matters most. This is key. You don’t want to find yourself in a well and your friends can’t arrive to rescue you when they can.
Before forty, you certainly will go through challenges that will test the strength of your relationships. You don’t want to get to forty and still be hanging around friends that will suck you dry. If you keep hanging around such persons, you will be heading for dry times in your forties and fifties when they have finally had their good run with you.
One quality of good friends is their ability to go the stretch with you, to sacrifice for you and to pay any price to be of help to you when you need them.
But friendships isn’t about your friends, it’s also about you. A person who wants to build good friendships must show he is friendly enough. What you expect from others must be because you are able to give the same quality.
Good friendships are on mutual benefits. If your friends are the ones only meeting your challenges and you aren’t helping them, that friendship is one sided and it will break down very soon. You ought to be a good friend to your friends too.
If you turn forty and your friends keep influencing you negatively, it will be hard to change. Bad habits are difficult to break beyond forty and so are friendships too. But you don’t need those who’d keep directing you towards negativity. You want people who will hang around you and help direct your path towards the purpose you were designed for through life.
Many companies we see around us today are because of the collaboration of friends. Check out Microsoft, Facebook, Digg, and LinkedIn. Friends came together, shared ideas, shared resources and started franchises that are celebrated the world over.
Who says you can’t have friends who will join effort with you, partner with you to build a strong venture, to pursue a dream or push an idea. But you need such good friends early in your life.
Life can be easier when you have friends who share the same aspiration as you do. You can leverage such friendships for the benefit of you and your friends.
Now that you are in your twenties and thirties when you still can push your dreams, you want people as friends who can collaborate with you, who can bring their youthful strength into your goals and dreams. Life is interesting when you have friends who share with you what you have.
Two friends of mine currently run an automobile workshop in my city. They were my classmates at the university and were good friends then. Now, they work together doing what they love to do- repairing cars.
As you achieve success doing what you are doing, people will want to hang around you as friends, especially the opposite sex. As a successful young woman, men are beckoning. As a successful young man, women are beckoning.
You’ve got to be deliberate about the people you choose to open yourself to. His deliberateness means you define what level of achievers and what caliber of persons hang around you.
Define the people in your life and know where to put them. That you are famous and successful does not mean everyone wants you to remain that way. You need as your important friends, those who are having the same drive as you do.
Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world has two best friends in his life. One is his wife Melinda Gates who shares the same ambition like he does and the second is Warren Buffet who is also amongst the riches men in the world, a mentor and fatherly figure.
Mark Zukerberg is also using the same principle as Gates and following in his steps. He is almost always seen around Gates when he is free.
Not everyone is meant to be friends with you. Some are meant to be students. If you allow the wrong persons hang around you, they can kill whatever ambition you have going into forty.
Before you turn forty, you would have made about all the mistakes you should make in your relationships to be able to learn from them. You should have been able to define your expectations so that you are gunning only for people who have what you need.
Think! What are you going to gain from keeping a particular friendship? What will you lose too? Whatever friendship you keep will mean you are either going to gain or lose something. The challenge however is that when you seem to be losing more than you are profiting, you need to check it out.
Don’t kill your ambition and dreams in the name of keeping a friendship with some person whose state of heart you really don’t know.
I read one particular novel where the protagonist had to give up his education where he was top of the class because he had to support his girlfriend to finish her education. He hoped to continue his education after she had finished only to be dumped by this girl friend after she finished school. She got married to another classmate who was doing well while the protagonist lived with regrets
Many young people have similar stories. It’s great if you can help some person achieve their goals and this is what friends are for. But if you are doing this at your detriment, you have to be certain this detriment won’t keep you in regrets many years down the line.
You don’t need forty friends before you turn forty, but you need friends that will add value to your life before you turn forty. If you will have to break up with forty friends to get the real friends that should matter before you turn forty, so be it.
Don’t just have friends because you want to be seen as friendly, have friends because you want to add value to some person’s life while you expect value too.
The smart thing to do before you turn forty is to connect correctly. It matters.