Friends

This weekend I spent time with some of my closest friends.  This group of women has been together for many years, meeting twice a year to spend the weekend together scrapbooking and crafting.  We gather, catch up, eat, drink, watch movies, craft, and share the stories of our lives.  We discuss problems and challenges and strengthen relationships that carry us through many of our life challenges.  

As I think about the relationships that I have with these women, it occurs to me that we all need close relationships in life to give us support and acceptance. We need to be heard and feel understood. Creating an enduring relationship or friendship, requires effort and personal investment — an investment of time in learning about our friends and understanding their needs, often putting those needs above our own.

We need to respect their unique individual personalities.  We are all shaped by a combination of inherent characteristics and life experiences causing us to be the people that we are.  In order to create relationships with each other we need to put in time learning about ourselves.  Understanding your values and preferences allows you to work towards respecting the differences in those around you.  If you are grounded in your values, you will become an amazing person that accepts those around you. Acceptance is the first step in growing strong relationships.

Ask people about their feelings and then really spend time listening.  One of the best ways to create a close relationship is listening to others with sincerity and empathy.  Being open to empathy requires active and intense listening skills.  Listening encourages people to express their emotions and relieves stress.  But don’t expect listening to be passive.  Expect that when you start to listen, you may get more emotion than you expected.  Emotions are an important part of any friendship, so if you extract some emotion while you are listening, consider yourself successful.

 

People require relationships to remain emotionally healthy.  If we are isolated and alone it causes self-doubt and loneliness.  We have seen this play out this past year with the increased social challenges of the pandemic.  People in isolation do not do as well as people with strong friendships and relationships. Working to connect with other human beings is an important part of a healthy life.  Work to reach out to others in any way that you can.  

Creating supportive and enduring relationships takes effort and investment, but the ultimate reward will be a life rich with love and support.  If you offer your love and support to another, you may not see the result today, but at some time in the future you will look up and find that you have many more friends that you imagined possible.  Reach out to others and soon your life will be rich with friendships and relationships.  

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” — Amy Poehler

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buechner