How To Choose The Right Friends And Why It’s Important
It is of no doubt that your closest friends always have the greatest influence on you. I believe it is extremely important to choose your closest friends wisely with care and surround yourself with the right people.
This article will first explain the importance of choosing the right friends and the way I see how human beings form friendships. Then I will talk about how to carefully identify the right people to be your closest friends.
If you want to become better but are scared of letting go of people that are close to you for your personal growth, you may need to work on your self-acceptance and lack of security first before actually following my tips. There is no point to continue reading if you don’t possess the mental resilience and courage required.
Why is it crucial to choose the right friends?
Everyone, in essence, is alone in this world. A mentally mature person who knows him/herself enough would never rely on friends or anything else to be the main source of security. You are the only protagonist of your show and you need to play it well. Hence, It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself and make decisions that are good for your personal growth.
Our energy and time are always limited, as we alter the way we present ourselves depends on different social situations all the time, it is when we are with our close friends we will return to our natural state and be off-guard. At this point, the environment will come into play and assimilate you (btw this is also the reason why stereotype and discrimination always exists).
There’s no way we can put a mask on all the time and we can’t conquer the influence of environment when we are completely relaxed. This is exactly why it’s extremely important to choose the right people to surround us. In essence, they are who you are.
How friendships are formed?
Friendship always happens based on the mighty law of attraction, we are always naturally attracted to people that are similar to us in one way or another. Confident people attract confident people, partygoers always hang out together, introverts like to stay close to introverts, insecure people are always being toxic together, etc.
There are 3 common rules people unconsciously follow to channel with a stranger and initiate a relationship. To befriend a person, you need to have at least one of the following:
- Similar personality
- Mutual Interest
- Similar Preferred Communication Style
I believe most friendships happen when at least one of the aforementioned commonality is reached. The more commonalities you share with a person, the closer you are more likely to become.
How to choose the right friends?
So now, how to identify the right friends?
From my perspective, you can always have a certain group of people who you are acquainted with and socialise regularly. As those people can’t affect you, you can adjust your social life based on your needs.
However, when it comes to close friends, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be careful with who you stay with. Never get close to someone just because you are scared of being alone, I’d rather have no close friends than being with the wrong people.
Personally, as a natural fun-driven and extroverted individual, I have tons of friends that I love to hang out with. But my close friends are always less than 5.
If you are already self-content and realise people around you are no longer up to your standard, adjust your distance with them immediately no matter how close you used to be. Friends always come and go, it’s meaningless to continue staying close to them. Explain directly with enough respect to reach mutual understanding, that’s all you gotta do.
If you are not satisfied with yourself and want to become the person you truly want to be, this pattern has to be broken. You have to get out of your comfort zone and get away from people you were originally attracted to.
To choose the right friends, you should go for the ones that have the quality you are keen to have. If you lack confidence, you should stay with people that radiates confidence; if you are terrible at communicating, you should expose yourself with people that are awesome communicators.
It might be scary because I’m probably asking you to conquer your greatest fear. As someone who has done this million times, I can honestly tell you that once you take the courage to make the first step, you will be more confident when you iterate and eventually truly become the person you want to be.
I believe authentic self-love only happens when you are being the person you want to be and do what you want to do. By then, you will only attract people that you truly enjoy being with and it’ll be the happiest feeling ever. I’m thrilled every day as I’m just being myself and love myself for who I am. It is the happiest feeling ever.
Wanna connect and have a chat? Hit me up on Instagram (@bhbh9888), LinkedIn or drop me an email at yibohui98@gmail.com.
Let’s grow together :)
