4 mistakes we make when choosing friends

A man who has no friends is equivalent to an island in the middle of a sea or an oasis left alone in a desert. There is nothing wrong with that anyway.

In a nutshell, such a man will deprive himself of power, help, and connection, etc, because friends are all these in one place. Imagine a tree without branches?

But of course, everything in life has its advantages and disadvantages.

Some people stay away from others because of fear of the disadvantages which friends can bring.

Still, at some point in life, we will have to trust someone even though it is true that humans can disappoint.

But who said that life should be perfect and fair? It isn’t, who said that man should be perfect? He isn’t.  Of what purpose is our lives without others in it? Of what purpose is life itself without humans? Void!

If we should live our lives based on such concepts, then we will end up being alone forever. That sounds like punishment in disguise to me.

Some of these ideologies sometimes keep us from having an experience of what life is all about, and because we try to avoid people who are not like us, we fail to understand life in its true form.

We fail to see life from different dimensions because we only lived our lives considering only our perspective.

According to the saying, to have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile. You have to be the friend you wish to see in others. You have to treat them exactly how you would want them to treat you.

This is basic in any true friendship. You just have to put selfishness and ego aside and do it for the relationship if you value it.

You have to give it a shot. And you have to keep trying until you meet the right friends. Don’t back out because of the negative part. You can be selective in choosing your friends, this is very much allowed.

You also must make sure you don’t make the mistake of assuming and having a fixed mindset of all the things your friend should be and shouldn’t.

Prioritization of important attributes isn’t bad, but giving clearance for errors is much better.

4 mistakes we make when choosing friends

Mistake 1: Thinking that they should always be the ones to help us

One of the mistakes you can make in choosing friends is thinking that they should always be the ones to help you, either financially, mentally or emotionally.

That sounds likes selfishness on a high level to me. We don’t have to be selfish about it, of course, it’s not bad to be a little selfish at times, no one is perfect, a little selfishness isn’t bad, but it becomes bad when we make it look like it should be about us hundred percent.

Friendship should play out like the two sides of a coin, not one.

Often, you should try to be on the other side of the equation where you are the one helping a friend grow either emotionally or financially.

As stated by Brandi Snyder, “To the world, you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”

Knock yourself out of such mentality and realize that life is coinlike and karma always pays back as what goes around comes around.

Some people wait for their friends to beg them for a thing before they do anything even when they can see it clearly that their friend needs help.

They just want to be perceived as the friend that helps when called upon. Of what use is that? Why must you wait for your friend to beg before you do something you know full well you are capable of taking care of?

It’s the wrong way to go about friendship. Having an entitlement mentality that your friend should always be the one giving and helping you out always while you sit back and stay happy and singing in your mind how wonderful your friend is- bad cal.

Mistake 2: Thinking that they must share all our interests

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, interest is something (such as hubby) that a person enjoys learning about or doing.

Let’s say for instance you love to play football or you love to dance and sing, and then you are looking for a friend based on these characteristics.

There is a high chance that that friendship would only last for as far as the hubby lasts. Meaning that any day you lose interest in that hubby, you will lose any interest in that particular friend.

Friendship should be more than just that. It’s a function of what the word friend means to you.

In that case, you are not actually looking for a friend, you are looking for a partner, same with when you are in business and you’re looking for a partner or at work where you are with a colleague.

But if you are looking for a friend dear to your heart, then that shouldn’t be your criteria.

These are all short time benchmarks. Look for something that is long term. Friendship should be long term, it should be close to forever.

Look for interests that are close to your heart, your soul.

Make them your benchmark and use them as your list of references when you are trying to choose. Put the artificial interests at the bottom and target the long term over short.

Mistake 3: Having the notion that they must have the same big visions and goals as us

This is a major challenge encountered when making friends. A challenge that arises as a result of ambition. A friend having similar goals and visions as ‘you’ shouldn’t also be a strict criterion.

If you are lucky enough to meet a friend who does, then you already have an upper hand. Don’t get it all wrong, having a friend who thinks big is more advantageous compared to having one who doesn’t.

Though getting a true friend dear to your heart and life is way deeper than.

The point is that your friend must not be pursuing the same big dream as you. You can have friends within different compartments who suit different areas of your life. You just need to learn how to differentiate them.

You have to remember that a friend has his or her dreams to pursue too even if yours is bigger. The plain fact is that it is likely that your dream or vision might be way bigger than theirs or vice versa.

You just have to respect them, it isn’t a competition or a business deal or a training ground.

If you looking for a person who would make you think bigger, then you should get a professional mentor if you must.

More importantly, one of the things to consider is whether he or she has room to accommodate new ideas, thoughts, and manner of thinking.

This is because in time you may need to be the one to do the job of uplifting their minds. You may need to slide more towards the giving end of the friendship. There is nothing like a weighing balance used to measure each other’s contribution.

Steve Jobs in his commencement address, to the graduating student at Stanford University, said that at a time he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.

He was willing to find it. He found a reason to add value to life and he did that somehow.

But not everyone is capable of doing that by themselves. If you find a friend who is wide open to learning, who also has a lot of potential considering your list of preferences, then giving them a shot isn’t wrong.

Some people need you to give them reasons why they need to think differently, and it happens like magic that they change their thinking the moment you make them see life in a way they have never seen before in their lives.

By doing so, you are unlocking a whole new person within your friend. You have impacted a soul.

So, don’t abandon a rare personality over personal ambition because they don’t share your goals and visions. Help him or her if you can, at least try to help.

You can’t change a man but you can help change his thinking and by doing so you will be making the world a better place.

Mistake 4: They must not be as Intelligence and Smart as us.

Some people choose friends based on their level of IQ, well that’s not bad, but your friend must not be as smart and intelligent as you are. This shouldn’t be a strict criterion.

People can learn, they can improve.

Being intelligent is good and ‘that’ can be improved on. If there is an understanding between you two, then working on intelligence can also be done.

Intelligence comes from knowing, increasing awareness and knowledge about a concept.

Some people marry people whom they are more intelligent than and they still come out to say it’s was the best thing that ever happened to them.

While some others marry people as intelligent as they are and realize along the line in a marriage that it wasn’t the best move.

I am in no way saying that marrying people who are as intelligent as you is bad. It isn’t, but making such things your top priority when choosing friends might turn out to backfire because friendship is more of an emotional connection than rational.

Friendship is not a measure of each other’s intelligence. S/he mustn’t know what you know. But they should be willing to learn, ‘that’ they should possess (wisdom).

Because in wisdom lies understanding and in understanding lies friendship that is lasting. A little of that and you two can flow just like a river.

Bottom line

One of the most important things in them being your friend is that they understand you and you understand them.

According to Lucius Annaeus Seneca “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and be understood.”

Common sense is very important, understanding requires common sense, and if you find a friend who has such quality, then you already are a step ahead.

Though it’s called common, yet it isn’t common, you might be surprised to find out when you meet diverse people who act as if they fell from the sky.

Common sense requires wisdom, not intelligence/smartness. Those two can be worked on and developed through experience and increasing knowledge and know-how.

If you must prioritize between these two, then wisdom, in my opinion, should stay atop of intelligence.

If you must, change your conceptions about who and who should not be your friend. But be smart about it, don’t make friends with people who you know full well will draw you back and add more negativity than their to your work-in-progress positive life.

Of course, we all have one negativity or the other, but do we want to have friends who add to that? I wouldn’t think so.

Don’t be in that position where you have to fight between staying positive as a person and becoming a negative person as a result of your new friend. Let go of such friends if you sense such.

If you want to know a real friend then their attitude towards you should be just the same towards others except in special cases where emotions come into play.

If they don’t do for others, some of what they do for you with a clear free mind, then you might want to question their personality. Because when a crisis comes, their true character will be revealed and they could treat you the same way they did others.

They might be with you because of the benefit they gain from you. Just be aware of such a possibility and try to find out why.

Don’t mistake a co-founder, partner or colleague for a friend. Though they can turn out to be with time depending on your definition of friendship.

In all, always keep the words of James Fredericks in mind when comparing, searching, choosing, and screening your friends: “Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities”. 

What other mistakes do you think people make when choosing friends. Leave a comment below.