Your friendships should bring you happiness, comfort and safety. You should be able to appreciate all the things that friends bring to your life. So wouldn’t you want your friends to feel the same about you? If you want great friends you too should be a great friend in return. Here’s how:
1 Be More Useful
One of the key ways to be a better friend is to make yourself more useful to your besties. It’s one thing to just hang around together and enjoy each other’s company, but you win even more friend points when you can actually stand up and say “hey! I can help you with that!” Whether it’s being available to give somebody a ride or having a free day to be able to help with a bigger job like painting a room, being a useful friend is always great.
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2 Be Committed
In other words, don’t play a constant double game with your different friends to see who is offering a better sounding hang out session. Sitting on the fence with regards to plans and then letting somebody down because you like the idea of somebody else’s party better is not an endearing move. The best way to avoid this is to make sure you divide your time equally between all your friends and stick to whatever plans are on the table.
3 Don’t Judge
A friendship group should be a safe zone in terms of hopes, goals and dreams, so don’t make your friend or friends feel small or insignificant by belittling their ambitions if they happen to be different than your own. People experience judgment in their lives from many different factions including family and work, so make sure you are a great friend by staying away from this and showing nothing but support.
4 Be Available
You can become a better friend by making yourself more available to your besties on a weekly or even daily basis. This does not necessarily mean having to meet up every single day, but more small things like making sure you reply to messages that have been sent, or dropping a quick line to have a chat when you have a few minutes to spare. We are all busy people, but being a good friend means making the time to stay in touch.
5 Keep Secrets
The foundation of any strong and long lasting friendship rests on the ability to be able to share and keep secrets with one another. Very often, your friends are the only people who you will feel like revealing something to and vice versa, so you have to let them know that they can have complete confidence that their secrets are not going to be the subject of tomorrow’s discussions at work or with other friends.
6 Emotional Connection
Sure, it’s important to have a lot of fun and frivolity with your friendship group, but to take it to the next level and become an even better and closer friend, you need to have a special kind of emotional connection that displays trust, understanding, sympathy, empathy, all of the deeper feelings that a person likes to find in another person.
7 Positivity
Positivity is key to making a friendship last and stay enjoyable. A group of people who are constantly down or pessimistic isn’t going to be a very enjoyable environment for an extended period of time. Try to be upbeat as often as you can when you are together. This positivity will filter through to all of you and make your friendship group a happy and loving one to be part of.
How do you rate yourself as a friend? And do you have the friends you think you deserve?
