Friendship
Without friends, I think my life would have been extremely boring. Nevertheless, they come and go. We must eliminate the toxic one and replace them with friends who can enhance your current life.
Passive friendship: If you have a family, siblings or went to school. You are passively expose to environment where they have characteristics that help to build friendship. Easiest one is school. (See below. We will use it as an example.)
Friendship fundamentals:
(1) Proximity: You live or engage in activities at a geographical place where other people live too.
· e.g.: Go to your local school. Meet other students who lives in the area too.
(2) Frequency: The more often you interact with someone, the more you become familiar. Build trust.
· e.g.: You go to school. You see the exact same people for 5-10 years.
(3) Time: The longer you spend time with a person, the more they become comfortable.
· 50 hours = casual friend
· 100 hours = Actual friend
· 200 hours = close friend
· e.g.: At school, you spend 6-8h with the same people everyday.
(4) Intensity: The “excuse” that brings you together. If it evokes a strong positive emotion. We will associate this emotion with the person. This builds friendship even faster. We will naturally want to “feel” the positive feeling again.
· e.g.: You go to school. This day, it’s sports day and you had a good time together playing basketball.
Extra: It adds to the initial 4 characteristics.
Type of communication: Face-to-Face > Phone call > Text
· This works with intensity also and time. If you meet face-to-face, you are more likely to spend more time together and activities can generate stronger emotional connection.
Social dynamics: 1-on-1 vs group
· 1-on-1: Deeper conversation, open up more => deeper connection
· Group event: More people, group joke, more casual, less deep.
Putting it all together: You want to create a situation where you have proximity, frequency, time and intensity that works in your favour to build friendship.
e.g.: Join a student association at your school (proximity) everyday after class (frequency). Attend activities and spend 1-2h with the same people (time). Have fun activities together (Intensity). Face-to-face. (Communication). During the activities, you can have group and 1-on-1 interaction.
« Friendship is a slow ripening fruit. »
“Give first mentality”: It’s easier to make friends by giving first. If interacting with you gives them value, then they will naturally want to be with you.
(1) Where to make friends?
Basically you need to find an “excuse” to go somewhere outside of your home where there are people doing the same “excuse”.
Focus on proximity, frequency, time and intensity.
e.g.: Go to school, pop, there are other students, just like you.
e.g.: Go to a meet up event to practice language, other enthusiastic people just like you.
“The environment you live in.”
· Neighbours, Flagmate, Roommates
· When you do laundry, grocery, mail office, bank, eat at restaurant, bars, coffee shop, park, library,
· Living place activities: “co-op living have activities to bring people together”
“The environment you are doing something for society”
· School: Classmate, people at the school
· Work: Co-workers, people in the company
· Entrepreneur: Clients, network,
“Place where you do/talk about your hobbies.”
· School: Club, student association
· Work: Corporate association, volunteer group in the company,
· “Meet-up group”:
· e.g.: Language exchange group, Hiking group, etc.
· Meet-up, Facebook group,
“Volunteering work”
· Festival, good cause, fundraising.
“Online friends”
· Dating: Hinge, POF, Tinder, Tantan.
· Language exchange: Tandem, HelloTalk, Wechat, Conversation Exchange
“Friends of friends”: very powerful
· To get start is hard, but once you have a bunch of quality friends, you can actively “create event” and have friends brings their friends. “Network effect”
(2) Maintain friendship
Be proactive and host events.
· Or, Invite them to events you are attending.
Refer them to friends you think can help them in their goals.
“They are your friends, but they might not be each other friends.
What matters is you brought them altogether around your table
for a common cause, your friendship.” – Alex
(3) Rebalance your “portfolio of friendship”
“If you look at the people in your circle and don’t get inspired, then you don’t have a circle. You have a cage.”
“Sell” position: Distance yourself from the toxic one (They not only not contribute to your dreams, but they hold you back.)
“Buy more”: Add more of the friends who enhance your life and help you push your dreams.
“Diversification”: It gives you another perspective on life.
· Similar to you (Same age, work at same field, grow up same place, etc.)
· Younger than you
· Older than you
· Different generations
· Opposite sex
· Live in another country
· Work in another industry
”Surround yourself with comrade who brings out the best in you.”
Comments:
When you are in the exploring phase, you can be friends with anyone. it’s like a big playground and people play. When you are working on yourself to become the strongest version of yourself, you will move in a direction outside of the mass. At that time, it’s a mix feeling between closeness and loneliness. It will be harder to connect with the mass, but when you connect with someone, the connection is stronger because you share something in common.
Rebalancing your portfolio will affect you too. You might have friends you think are good friends, but they move in a particular direction in life where you don’t belong, so they will let you go. It’s a good thing because you don’t want to be on a boat that moves you toward a direction that doesn’t make sense to you.
Books recommendations:
How to win friends and Influence people, by Dale Carnegie: Teach you how to be a more friendly individual.
Any “Shonen” manga: Through the main hero’s actions, you learn about friendship.
Quotes:
“What one should really fear is not a competent enemy, but an incompetent ally.”
“There is no point in having many things if we have no one to share them with.”
People should talk to others everyday, even if its small talk. Otherwise their hearts grow dark and serious. Talking to others builds bonds and makes you feel grateful that you’re alive. That’s the kind of creatures we humans are. – Jiraiya
“Most of us have friends who are like us. We might have a few close acquaintances who are richer, a few who are poorer, and a few of different races, but, on the whole, our deepest relationships tend to be with people who look like us, earn about the same amount of money, and come from similar backgrounds.”- Power Of Habit
SimpleLifebalancing.