How do you choose the right friends? Maybe the right question to ask before that is: Do you choose your friends or are they the ones who choose you?
If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
~ Zig Ziglar
Our success in life can begin and end depending on the kinds of friends we keep. Never underestimate the power wielded by friends which is evident through the power of association.
When it comes to friends, we can either
- choose them by ourselves,
- allow them to choose us,
- change them when we feel and think they are no longer good for our lives or,
- keep them regardless of whether they are good for us or not.
Our future may be dependent on the decision we decide to go by. Few things are constants in life and ‘change’ is one that is certain.
Change is a certainty that occurs in every humans’ life whether s/he likes it or not. For instance, at one point in our lives we were crawling and at another point, we started walking and running.
Most at times life requires that in other for one to change oneself, one must change the people around.
But you can’t change a thing in your life if you have not identified it as something that needs changing. In this case, the change might be the fact that you have friends you know are no longer adding value to your life in any way. In another case, it may be a change to make new friends that can help you become better or achieve more in life.
I know of someone during my grade school days, he was very selective about the kind of friends he made. He was very choosy when it came to the issue of keeping people really close.
The idea of not being friends to everyone that came around him enabled him to build up his values without much stress of conflicting ideas, thoughts, attitudes and characters from people he knew. He only had a few that were close.
Now, I am not saying that he didn’t roll, go out or play with other kids of his age, he did that a lot, but he was very sensitive to the ones he kept really close.
You know, in reality, we all call everyone that we talk to a friend, but deep down our hearts and minds, we know how to differentiate who our real and true friends are.
It’s very easy to come across people. We wake up, go out and we meet new people who in one way or the other turn out to become our friends, and often this friendship is built up without our prior permission. It just happened to us.
You just happened to wake up one day to find out that boom! you have become close friends with a particular person and in most cases, you can’t do anything about it.
The knot has been tied and any endeavor to untie it may become obvious and may turn the person into an enemy, just sometimes, so what do you do?
Most times you go-ahead to keep the friendship even when it appears to you that they are not what you truly want. You get stuck in it. Though you may enjoy their company, even then, deep down, you know that the person isn’t the company you really need.
It may start from just being family friends, casual friends, and then it turns into being ‘best of friends’. Not because you click so well with that person, but because association and closeness have bonded you both.
This selection process isn’t conscious, it isn’t one with your full permission… but then it appears like you can’t do anything about it. Sometimes you sit back and wonder has it really happened – you can’t figure that out.
Hey! Don’t get it twisted…It happens to us all at one point or the other. I have had friends I wished I could let go, but then it’s so difficult to quit someone whom you have been close to you for a long time, maybe because you reside in the same neighborhood or attended the same school.
It sounds ridiculous and so hard for the considerable heart, given how emotional the human mind can be.
So why not we start from the back-end to fix things than from the front-end.
As painful as it may sound, in most cases, for us to achieve happiness in life may require that we change the people who are close to us no matter how painful it might be. We just have to in one way or the other find a method by which we can get separated from them.
Start the change from within
In other to be able to choose the right friends, one needs to start from within oneself.
That decision you would make on separating from a particular friend is because of a change you wish to see in you.
So, for you to be able to achieve that fit, you must first be sure you need the change. Changing people around you will need you changing yourself.
The first important step in the process of changing yourself is to first realize that there exists a need for a change in your life which is something you can do by evaluating the impact and influence that friends – your friends make in your life.
It is said that your friends are a reflection of your future, so then we can say ‘show me your friend and I will tell you where you are headed to and where you will be in years from now’.
The friends you keep can determine your present and future status if you let them.
Having friends can be something good in our lives and at the same time something bad depending.
They can affect and influence you positively or negatively leaving you with the option of choosing the one that best suits you.
You need to identify their influence, if it’s positive, negative or if it’s either positive or negative.
Being aware of this sets you in the path of either finding a solution or leaving things the way they are. It’s just an option you alone can choose from.
Most often we tend to remain at a spot because we fail to find a need that can charge us to move, and on the other hand, we fail to realize that the friends who we associate with have a way of affecting who we are and who we become in our personality.
Being able to realize that friends can affect your outcome, means that there is a chance that you can change your situation.
It’s good to note that sometimes we stay in problems and conditions that don’t suit or help our personality without even knowing or realizing that it’s a problem that needs solving.
The problem with most of us is that often we engross ourselves into being friends with just anybody, maybe because that person was nice to us at one point, so we fail to further examine the person to see if this person can suit into our life pattern in the long run, including our beliefs and maybe future life plans.
BenchMark for choosing the right friends
If you make friends and don’t take your time to crosscheck how the person would influence your life through your thoughts and emotions, it means that you are not the person choosing, instead, you are being chosen.
In a nutshell, you are trying to tell yourself that you stand for anything not minding what the outcome might be for you.
The truth about making friends is that nobody has the right to choose you or impose themselves on you, instead, you should be the one making a choice.
It’s not something of a force that requires you to like or love someone back because they like or love you, it’s a choice, your choice.
Life is a choice and we live by choices every day. If you are not bold or mindful enough to choose who stays in your life and who doesn’t, it means that you want to leave your life to anything that goes, a life of chance.
The power of association, closeness, and communication are unmeasurable.
These are the things that tend to occur when friends come into your life and you into theirs.
If you don’t examine the kind of mindset and sense of humor a potential friend carries inside of them, s/he may end up corrupting your own mind with their thoughts.
If you are lucky, his thoughts might be the kind that you can deal with, in that case, ‘good for you’, you worked by chance and the risk paid off, but if that isn’t the case, you would have made a mistake which you might find difficult to fix.
To examine friends before taking a final decision, there are four influencer tips you can use to access them so as to know how they would affect and influence you.
Being aware of these tips can help you work into friendship with anyone with eyes clearly open knowing the risks, loss, and gains, in the end, it’s your decision.
You can crosscheck your friends using some benchmarks if you really wish to, but choosing just one benchmark could cover every other thing you can ever wish to have in a friend, which is choosing a friend with the same core value beliefs as you. This is the safest path you can take if you want less stress when trying to choose friends.
Your core value belief is the key to unlocking and choosing the right friends from the start, there might be other factors you might consider, but all come under your core value beliefs. On the other hand, you can make a friend and make them think of life the way you want them to. That is another option, though not the safest way.
Choose the right friends by following the benchmark
When trying to choose the right friends, it advisable to choose persons who share similar core values beliefs as you. You are aiming at choosing what will be right for you.
Whether you are good or bad will determine the kind of people you would love by your side.
I mean, you wouldn’t want to have a friend that always thinks towards the north while you think towards the south pole. You two will have a lot of arguments except if you decide to respect each other’s opinions.
Trust me if care is not taken, one day one person will begin to think towards the other pole, but for what need is that? why not make your life less stress-free by choosing those friends that share similar core values as you.
Our core values can vary from person to person in different ways just as we are different in diverse ways. Still, there are values that we share with people that are similar to ours.
These core values beliefs may be that:
- They believe in being honest,
- They believe in doing the right thing,
- They believe in being real and Transparent,
- They believe in helping, uplifting and impacting others,
- They believe in unlearning and relearning,
- They believe in celebrating other peoples’ successes,
- They believe in loyalty and trustworthiness,
- They believe in trying and learning new things,
- They believe in thinking big,
- They believe in living happily etc.
There are loads of them, we can go on and on, but It’s all about you and your beliefs. You know your core values, it’s not something someone should tell you or list for you, you only need to take some steps which will enable you to prepare your mindset in choosing who should stay close as a friend and who shouldn’t.
Choosing your friends is a decision process you alone can undergo.
One of the important things one needs to do in other to be able to choose the right friends is to first choose oneself. To choose the right friends can be a daunting task for the mind.
One other most important factor to consider when trying to choose the right friends is being aware of their impact on your life. If you are a positive person, then you should try your best to choose more positive people as friends as you cannot roll with negative people and expect positive feedback from them.
Be very much aware of yourself, your goals and your needs in life, this will help you to narrow them down better.
Finally – Think about it
If you have never thought of the impact your friends make in your life before, then it’s time you sit down to meditate on what you really want out of life, then go ahead to think of the kind of people you need around you. Also, remember that your happiness and inner peace is partly attached to the kind of people you keep around. So you must be conscious and cautious about it.
You must note that as you are choosing your friends, they also should choose you. If it’s one-sided, then the friendship might not grow strong. Of course, nothing is perfect in life and that might be the case sometimes.
The point is that it’s better that you are the one on the choosing end who gets to decide who stays and who doesn’t than to be on the other end where they choose you without your consent.
There is no perfect time for you to begin to make changes in your life. You can begin today and live tomorrow to rejoice of today’s decisions.
Also, check to learn the steps you can take when trying to choose the right friends.
What is your benchmark for choosing friends? How do you choose your friends? let us know in the comment section below.
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