There is a reason why choosing the right friends is important when trying to make new friends, and this reason is the fact that friends have a huge influence on one’s life.

Having friends in one’s life can be a wonderful thing, on the other hand, it can also be a disastrous thing depending, which is why the importance of choosing friends carefully can not be overemphasized.

It boils down to the kind of persons you end with as friends. It also depends on whether you are the one choosing them or they are the ones choosing you or in another case, you might be lucky and fortunate enough that it turns out you have a wonderful friend in someone.

Choosing friends can be a tricky deal because sometimes we may choose, and end up finding out that they are not really what we first had in our minds.

As time passes by we get to know them more and more. Even at that, having friends is important in life for so many different reasons.

No man can exist alone in the world and the combination of oneself and others is what makes life complete.

Being choosy with friends or being selective with friends isn’t a wrong thing to do.

We stand a better chance of moving towards a direction that could be beneficial to us if we are the ones choosing our friends from the start. Friends are important add-ons for anyone who understands how complex life can be.

Because at some point they may be the ones we could call upon for help when we face challenges. These friends can be made from anywhere, some  from the neighborhood, childhood, at school, at the workplace, etc

There are no concrete ways of picking the best persons as friends but there are steps we can take to choose the right friends from the start. These steps will highly minimize our chances of ending up with the wrong persons as friends, though it doesn’t eliminate the possibility.

These steps can vary in different ways from person to person. All you need do is to follow and modify it to suit your personality.

Steps to choosing the right friends

Tip #1 – Cautiously look inward and decide what you truly want

Regardless of the benefits of having the right friends may present, before going ahead to choose friends one should first be able to look inward to ascertain if they really need friends in their lives or if they need a change of friends in a case where they already have friends they are not satisfied with.

This is where re-evaluating friendships come into play. This also is where the question of what to look for in friends come into mind.

The truth is, If you have not realized that you need a change in your life, then no change will ever happen. You have to look within to be certain that you need a change in your life. Then you can begin to consider if you need a change of friends, and in other cases, you might want to decide if you should be the one to choose your friends.

It’s also important to note that this process is better off if the person involved understands themselves a little bit more. Because understanding one’s self takes both emotions and thoughts to help one to figure out what is really important to them.

So if you are going to walk pass through this stage, you will need to sit down and have a deep self-assessment of yourself, about your personality, think about your life – your goals and dreams and desires, about why you need to make new friends or change the ones you already keep close. You need to be certain that you really want to make that move.

TIP #2 – Find and identify those core value attributes you believe in

If after looking within, you come to a conclusion that you really need a change in your life as with respect to the friends you have or the ones you are yet to make, then it’s time to find and identify all the beliefs and attributes about the life you cherish and believe in as there are so many factors that determine choice of friends.

At this stage, you need to consider the attributes you would want to have in a friend, in other words, they should possess those attributes too to an extent.

To be able to identify these attributes, you need to consider your personality, the things you believe in because friendships nourish better in a space where two or more persons believe in similar things and share similar attributes.

These values and attributes might be that you share similar goals in life or that you love to help people, to motivate people, it may be that you love to be real and straight forward, it might be that you got guts or that you love persons who think big.

You have to consider whether you want an open or private person, someone who is business-oriented, someone who has empathy, someone who is honest and has integrity or the opposite, etc. You have to consider a lot of things you would want to see in a friend.

By doing so, you would give yourself the opportunity to have a chance at choosing friends who will be right for you and your life. Life has no duplicate as we all have one life to live.

If happiness is part of your center of focus in life, then you might want to consider the attributes of the friends you keep really close. Identifying your attributes first is the place to begin.

TIP #3 – Prioritize your list of core value attributes

After identifying what your core value attributes, including the characteristics you wish to see in a friend, the next thing to do is to scale preference them. The reason for this is because no one can have all your core value attributes on a plate as this is what creates the uniqueness in individuals.

So, when looking, you need to have at the back of your mind the fact that you can’t get exact similarities as you are as a person in another person. Some things will differ from your self. But scaling them will help you to know which attribute to give more consideration to.

Put the major attributes which you care most about at the top first, and then put the rest below in descending order.

Prioritization helps you to narrow down the lot of persons whom you feel suit your caliber of persons. It will help reduce any confusion you may face while narrowing them down.

TIP #4 – Define and benchmark

Pick the most important values which found themselves at the top of your scale and use them as a measure to cross-examine every person you may wish to be close friends with.

Define and benchmark every one person you think might be a good fit against your scale of preference and let your list be your map to reaching your final destination, which is selecting the right persons.

This way you give your self a better chance of ending up with the right persons.

TIP #5 – Begin to choose

Having set up all these, you are then ready to try it out on people that try to come close to you or people you wish to get close to.

If they don’t pass the test, given your benchmark, then you can decide on what you do with them.

It’s either you keep them at arm’s length or forfeit the intended friendship.

In the end, It’s a choice which you must make, and if you wish to compromise and let the person in, it’s still a choice.

This is where we need to work on increasing the intelligence of our emotions because it helps guide our thoughts during a thinking and decision-making process.

Be patient and be the friend you wish to see in another friend

It is important to keep in mind that the process of choosing friends or getting rid of friends can be emotional and time-consuming. It’s a process that needs patience, calmness, a lot of thinking, and a lot of back and forth benchmarking to be able to come to a resolution.

Also, it is important to note that not everyone you choose will choose you as you have. So you need to be prepared in case you face rejection.

Following through on these steps does not guarantee that a person you end up with will be the right friend that will walk with you all the way through life, because only time can reveal that, then you will know if you made the right choice or not.

So don’t be caught off guard, choose your friends wisely, get your mind prepared for eventualities and uncertainties that may come through those friends.

Be the best kind of friends you wish your friends to be to you, doing this will also help nourish any friendship you share.

Also remember, the world is a big place, and the word friend can mean different things to anyone at any point in time.

How do you choose your friends? Let us know by dropping a comment below. Also, see this post on the importance of choosing the right friends.