The different kinds of friends we keep in our lives will in one way or the other get to influence our thought processes either in a negative or positive way.

In life, we often end up with different kinds of friends whom we spend most of our precious time with on a daily basis. Each one of these friends in one way or another has something different that makes them unique.

Clearly, every living being has a substance inside of them – a substance in this case is a unique potential that can make him tick and shine, often waiting for time and chance to reveal itself.

This uniqueness is built inside us, yet we often live our whole lives not discovering what it is.

Fear, doubt, and lack of confidence are part of the biggest hindrances that prevent us from discovering, enhancing, and shooting it out from within us.

Sometimes we tend to unveil it as a result of the kinds of people we find around us – especially the kinds of close friends we keep.

Definitely, our substances can be influenced negatively or positively by people in the place we find ourselves, most often the people we call our friends.

It is a simple fact that not everyone who comes into our lives is there to love or uplift us. Some come with an intention to use us for their own gains.

Often, the impact friends have on us is mostly transferred mentally. Mentally being that they affect our thoughts usually through words, their sense of humor, attitude, and character.

Somehow, these things tend to get to our psychological minds and at one point or the other, we find ourselves thinking over what we saw or heard, and then we could start imagining ourselves trying it out.

Identifying, reducing, and replacing vain friends with effective real friends can do a lot of good in our life.

The four Influencer kinds of friends

Those who we call friends will come in different forms with different packages and mindsets.

They can affect our lives through a mental or physical approach. Mentally they can influence us in any of these ways…

1. Friends who add substance to your life

These kinds of friends tend to add to your life positively sometimes without even knowing that they are impacting your life. This is true because no one gives what he doesn’t have.

It’s important to note that having a substance inside is quite different from bringing it out to help others.

These kinds of friends are willing to help mostly when you ask of them. In other cases, you only get influenced by them because you see them shining and because of the fact that you would wish to emulate and learn a part of how they think, live or how they do what they do so that you can also shine.

In essence, these kinds of friends impact and adds value to your life in their own little way because they do not put in much effort or time to helping you as they are more concentrated on themselves. Dedicating their time towards helping you out will be like stealing from their time which you might have to steal from.

It’s not in them to help you in a much more direct approach by talking or encouraging you, but you gain more by following them, watching their behavior, character, and attitude towards others, their family, business, and life in general.

You just get infected and impacted because of their reasoning mentality and actions.  In some cases, they may attempt to add to your life when you request them, and they are ever ready to help out to the best of their ability but might not put in so much effort in seeing you reach your goals.

2. Friends who reduce the substance in you

These kinds of friends are the ones that do not care about your life plans, missions or visions. They only care about themselves. Being around them only causes your spirit, ambition, and dreams to decline.

Often, this happens unconsciously without you knowing that such a transition is taking place in your mind.

These kinds of friends are either moving or living their lives with a morbid sense of humor or a life without any purpose in mind.

They live with a selfish mentality or an inherent stupidity which they may be ignorant of, having grown up with such a mentality which turned out to be a result of how they are wired from within, affected majorly by the environment they grew up in and the people they spent most of their time with while growing up.

No positivity ever comes out of them, instead, they think of millions of negative ideas and they try to convince you to follow them in doing what they do.

As they think of million negations, they also give you millions of reasons why what you think wouldn’t work out. These are the kind of people that we can say are toxic in their thinking.

Staying close to them will only affect your mindset negatively. When you look around, you will notice that all they spew from their mouth doesn’t help fire you up in any way rather it quenches the fire in you as days go by and as you stay close to them each day.

The best way to take note of these kinds of friends is to take note of the changes happening in your mind over time as you spend more time with them. You will feel a drop in your thinking, concentration, and meditating ability. Because they don’t understand you or ever care to, they would try their best to break you into being like them so that they can feel more comfortable around you and maybe have power over you.

3. Friends who multiply the substance in you

These kinds of friends tend to add to your life exponentially. They bring out the substance in you. They help to bring out a more positive part of you that you may never have considered or noticed before.

They are fully aware of what they possess in themselves as well as what you have in you.

These kinds of friends when they come into your life will tend to help you think and imagine more than you used to in the past.

Such friends are not naive about the processes involved in motivating and helping others become better because it’s part of what they love doing. You can’t help but adjust because they put their mind into helping you grow.

They add value to your life and will fire you up which could force you to question the value other friends you keep add to your life.

Friends in this category try their best to set you in motion, and guild you in the best way they can. Often these kinds of people believe that by helping you become better, they are doing themselves a favor which makes them happy in the heart.

They help you imagine more than you used to. When you bring up a good idea, they expand it and they tell you more ways in which you can enhance it so as to run with the idea.

Such friends tend to think of you beyond the ordinary and give you a million reasons why you can do more than you are currently doing.

They just make you think above your normal thinking state. They just don’t make you better, they multiply and increase exponentially the substance in you and watch you fly.

These kinds of friends help you develop a propensity to achieving more and thinking bigger.

It’s just in them, they don’t settle for a normal life, they add an extra to the normal life, and they want to push above limits. So they push you to go beyond what you feel and think is the limit you can go no further.

When you feel depressed, they become the voice to lift you and teach you how to deal with such situations in the future. And when they are unable to help you, they try to connect you to those who can. They may be your friends, but in reality, they are mentors because they hold you by the hand and force your mind to think for itself.

4. Friends who do nothing to your substance

As funny as it may seem, we tend to have these kinds of friends in one way or the other. If we can look a little bit closer to our lives and the friends we keep, we will find these friends lurking around us.

These kinds of friends may love to live a simple and normal life with almost no stress.

They do not think about your failure or success because they are busy thinking about how they can be comfortable without much disturbance in their life. They do not want much, they just wish to be happy in life without thinking much.

People who fall under these categories as friends sometimes usually settle for what life offers them. They hardly push forward for more because they are comfortable with their level of thoughts and desires.

They neither add, subtract nor multiply your substance because they live with a belief that they may have nothing to offer you even when they do.

These kinds of friends usually hardly have suggestions or opinions on matters regarding your life, they can stay dumb when you ask for their input. They may feel that they are not worthy or wise enough to advise you.

In most cases, you turn out to be the one always trying to add or multiply the substance in them. They sort of love to remain neutral.

In most cases, they are your friends because they just love your personality and friendship in general and enjoy your company and relationship.

Often, they tend to want to see your progress but do not know how to help even when they are more successful than you are.

Even when you seek their opinions, they are much more likely to get stuck and not know how to help you. Sometimes, when they try to explain, they find out that they do not know how to.

In most cases, you end up being the one to push them to get better at something as they are happy to walk with you and stay your friend.

A closer look and you will find these friends in your life. You are with them not because you benefit anything from them.

Of course, we can’t always benefit from everything, sometimes we have to be the ones others benefit from.

Bottom line on

In one way or the other, at some point in our lives, we tend to meet these different kinds of friends. You only get to differentiate them by observing their attitudes towards you and by comparing your life before and after meeting them.

It is important to note that your ability to differentiate them is based on your ability to look for the signs. If you do not look for those signs, you will never understand how much impact the ones you call friends make in your life – you will never know if they are sapping energy from you or not.

The truth is that those whom you spend most of your time with; those whom you give much of your attention will always impact how you think and live your life – that is a certainty.

Pause for a second, take some time, and categorize the friends you keep close, put them under a particular group, and decide for yourself if they deserve much of your time.

Remember, you may have to be the one adding value to the lives of your friends in most cases. Also, as you try to categorize them, try to also checkmate your impact on the lives of those you call friends.

It can be challenging sometimes to alienate ourselves from friends that influence us negatively when we become aware.  The most important step is to become aware of the impact friends have on us for a start.

With this, we will have the opportunity to find solutions on how we can approach the situation.

Knowing which category each of your friends falls in will give you the opportunity to take charge of your life. With this, you can have the chance to start living your best life.

Take a moment, and ask yourself: Which category of influencers do most of the friends I keep fall in? Tell us what your thoughts are by using the comment section.