The Importance of Healthy Friendships for a Balanced, Abundant Life
The month of February is geared towards the power of love and intimacy when we celebrate Valentines Day.
However, loving someone and sharing intimacy should first start with establishing a healthy friendship, whether platonic or romantic!
Having a friendship that will not only develop in a healthy way, but also endure despite personality differences and life’s ups and downs is based on certain “building blocks”. These will help us avoid toxic relationships, and establish nurturing, healthy and genuine friendships. Below are some of “healthy friendship building tools” to use.
Investing Time
In order for any relationship to flourish, we have to invest our time in our friend’s life. It should definitely be a “two-way” street between friends.
Communication
Two-way communication is definitely a key component for the foundation of having a healthy, lasting friendship.
Sharing Joys and Sorrows
To truly have a healthy friendship, both parties have to be genuinely open in sharing our joys as well as sorrows, without judgement or jealousy. tragedies and trials are a normal part of everyone’s life! We can’t be a “fair weather” friend whose only wants to hear positive talk. That’s both selfish and self-centered (and who wants someone who’ll desert them because they don’t want to feel uncomfortable?).
Truthfulness
Truthfulness is one one of the most important and foundational pillars that a healthy friendship stands on! We have to first be honest with ourselves, which leads to being honest with our friends.
Gratitude and Thankfulness
Don’t take it for granted that a healthy friendship is by osmosis! Expressing gratitude to your friend for your friendship and support is crucial.
Having Tolerance in a Healthy Friendship
Listen:We all have our little personality quirks and habits. If we expect our friends to act and behave exactly like we think they should, then we’re setting ourselves up for many disappointments. Having healthy friendships require tolerance and patience to overlook one another’s “uniqueness”. Here’s where honest and loving communication comes into play.
Behavioral Traits to Avoid Damaging Our Friendships
I will list some behaviors that certainly damage relationships of all sorts, and inhibits healthy friendships:
- Being overly critical
- Jealousy and envy
- Being chronically busy can ruin a healthy friendship
- Manipulative (i.e. passive/aggressiveness)
- Lying destroys trust
- Selfishness
- A bad temper
Healthy friendships are both a treasure and a responsibility!
Take this time to review your responsibility in changing toxic traits in your own personality and your friendships, see if those friendships need repairing, and know that being proactive in maintaining healthy friendships is crucial to having a balanced and abundant life!
