THREE WAYS TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL FRIENDSHIP

Man is a social animal and to be social is synonymous to building and maintaining a strong atmosphere of friendship with a few number of individuals who mean a lot to you in your life. These are people you would value more than colleagues, and cherished as brothers or sisters.

Being one of the essentials of meaningful living, our life is

constantly spiced up and flavored by the very element called friendship, for without friends, life would have been such a boring and tiresome affair.

I’ve always told my audience that your worth is not actually the combination of all the investments you have in different banks, neither is it the money you left deposited in your bank account. Your actual worth is the average of the combination of at least five closest friends in your life, for they shall influence you the most, manipulate your decisions, polish or tarnish  your attitude and refine or degrade your personality. We usually term it peer group.

In moments of fun, we are entertained by and with our friends. In times of difficulties, we are encouraged by our friends. When we encounter overwhelming challenges, our friends help us conquer them. Thus, you need friends in your life to survive all the hurdles life has got to offer.

Our ability to succeed or fail in different endeavors of life is dependent upon the degree and strength of friendship we have in that endeavor.

However, as needful as this concept is to humanities, man has continued to struggle over building and maintaining a good atmosphere of friendship in his life. As Tim Lahaye implied in his book- “WHY YOU ACT THE WAY YOU DO”, the ability to create and maintain friendship is personality dependent. And so a sanguine personality has a varying ability to make friends as compared to a choleric. In the same vein, a phlegmatic personality cannot build the same degree of friends as a melancholic.

Even though this is time-proven truth, the good news is that no matter what your personality is, you can still build a great friendship with those who mean a lot to you, nurture it and let it grow into a life-time all-weather companionship.

Here are three major ways you can build and maintain a successful friendship:

•    Identify or create a common interest

I could remember when I was in high school, and during my diploma programme. I had and maintained many friends in my circle. We firstly came together as a study group, and eventually ended as close friends. We were all brought together by a common interest- to study and succeed academically. But as we advanced forward to our various careers and in different institutions, I started looking for these friends. Our interests diversified, our places of meeting disappeared and the friendship got terminated.

The very first step to building a successful friendship is to identify an interest common to all parties involved, and work on such interest.   Common interest is the floor upon which every other ingredients of friendship are cemented. It is the foundation on which successful friendship is built. Once there is absence of common interest, or as soon as this interest diminishes, the friendship would start shaking.

I was once a marketer in a leading insurance company in Nigeria. The most difficult thing in the business is not to identify a prospective client but to strike off an atmosphere of friendship that would make him comfortable while I discussed my business affairs with him. I usually kick off by creating an affable atmosphere either by throwing a joke, offering to help him with something or some other ways I deem suitable at that point in time. Then I would go on to identify an area that would be of interest to him. It could be sports, politics, economy, entertainment, religion or business. Immediately I’m able to create or identify such interest, the friendship has started.

The fact remains that whether you need a short time friendship for business purposes or a long term friendship for life companionship, establishing a common interest is the very first step to starting a successful friendship.

•   Open and maintain a constant line of communication

 

One thing is to start off a friendship; another thing is to nurture it and make it survive. Constant communication is the live wire of every friendship. Getting connected with your friends through various means of communication also ensures emotional and psychological connection between the parties.  And once this communication is disrupted for a significant period of time, the friendship begins to wither.

The reason behind most of our failed friendships is lack of constant communication. I don’t mean you should call each other on phone every hour of the day or every day of the week, but following up with your friends on his social media handles, paying a visit or having a lunch together once in a while and spending some time with each other would guarantee constant communication, promote understanding of both personalities and help build the friendship to a long-lasting relationship.

•   Solve one another's  problem

 “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”  This is a popular saying that shows when a friend is needed most.  You cannot build a successful friendship if either or both parties are not empathic. To be empathic is to feel each other’s problems and help solve or alleviate the problem. You may not be capable to solve the problem, but being with him at his challenging time, riding with him under the sun and in the rain would surely strengthen the friendship and make him value you the more. Friendship lasts if both parties do value each other. And once you value each other, you cherish the friendship.

• Bonus #1. Celebrate your friends in a special way

 

 Don’t fail to remember your friend’s special days such as birthdays, anniversaries, and don’t hesitate to celebrate these days with them in a special way especially when he invites you to his special occasions. Sometimes, you could throw up a surprise party, buy an amazing gift or even sponsor his events or anniversaries. These will go a long way to strengthening the friendship.

• Bonus #2. Recognize and appreciate each other’s accomplishments.

 One of the things that kills friendship is jealousy. If you really want to build and maintain a successful long lasting friendship, get rid of jealousy. Dispose jealousy from your personality. We have the natural tendency to develop jealousy or envy over our friend’s accomplishments when we are far from achieving the same accomplishments. But what we don’t know is that the higher we celebrate and appreciate someone’s success, the nearer we attract success to ourselves.

Recognizing and appreciating his accomplishments would not only strengthen the friendship but keep you on the same track of such successful accomplishments.

Finally, you have to understand that friendship is like wine, the longer it lasts, the stronger it becomes. If it is not getting stronger as time passes by, just note that either of the parties are failing in one of the aforementioned items. Check to see if the fault is from you, and don’t hesitate to fix it once you identify an error. Bear it in mind that you don’t enforce friendship on someone. If one of the parties is doing most of the jobs to keep it alive, then it’s not worthy to be called friendship, because a successful friendship is the result of the combined effort of all the parties involved. 

Article written by Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Eminent Agbo
A Motivational Speaker, a Creative Writer, a Blogger and a Digital Marketer

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