How Many Friends Do You Have?

How Many Friends Do You Have?

12/17/2013 09:38:00 am
By Brenda J Silveira
Expert Author Brenda J Silveira
How many friends do you have? One, ten, hundreds? Today with social media, people can have literally thousands of friends, but what does this really mean?
When referring to a relationship between two people, the dictionary describes a friend as "someone you like and enjoy being with". This means you have to be in close contact with a person to be their friend. However, society today has broadened the term 'friend' to include people they are not necessarily in close contact with and ones they may not even know very well at all.
Having friends is essential for our health and well-being. It helps us to form good relationships, build our esteem and make good decisions. However, if we do not have good friends, it can destroy our self-esteem and cause numerous problems in our lives.
Think about the friends you have. Do they make you feel good or bad? Do they lift you up or pull you down? Having lots of friends may seem great, but it is better to have just 1 good friend than it is to have 100 friends who make you feel bad and destroy your esteem.
We should all have an inner and outer circle of friends. The inner circle should include just a few close family member and friends that you totally trust. These are the people whom you can count on no matter what happens in life. The outer circle should include all the other people that you know. These are the ones that you see once in while and don't have a close relationship with.
How do you decide who should be in your inner and outer circle? Here are some questions you should ask yourself about everyone you know:
  1. Do you trust each other completely?
  2. Do you like to spend time together?
  3. Does your friend make you feel good about yourself?
  4. Do you share secrets that are not repeated to anyone?
  5. Do you disagree but still talk together about things?
  6. Do you encourage each other?
  7. Do you have fun together?
  8. Do you stick up for each other when someone tries to hurt either of you?
  9. Are you always there for each other even when you are sick or feeling alone?
  10. Do you accept each other's differences?
If you can answer all the questions with 'yes', then you likely have a good friend that should be in your inner circle. If you answered some or all of the questions with 'no', then this is probably not a very good friend and they should be in your outer circle. Do this quiz with all your friends and think carefully about what circle they should be in.
We all want people to like us and we all need to have friends, but we really need to choose carefully who we allow to get close to our hearts and try to distance ourselves from people who are negative, unsupportive or uncaring. This doesn't mean we should completely ignore all negative people because they also need love and support from others. What we need to do is build our own esteem until we can become a strong, positive example and then we can try to influence people in a positive way.
Learn more about building confidence and self-esteem by visiting http://www.imconfident.com

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