Life Begun

Friendships and family are the most important things in the world. When life has you down, it is always your family and friends who will be the ones there to pull you out. But we often take these relationships for granted and don’t put the time into developing and maintaining them as we do with our careers. That can be a massive mistake. If you want to make sure your friends continue to be there for you, you should start reciprocating right now. Here are some ideas.

Photo By Fazen

1) Give a compliment – When you are familiar with someone and see them all the time, it’s easy to slip into taking them for granted. When is the last time you gave your friend a warm and genuine compliment without expectation of reciprocation or reward. Do it now. It will almost certainly be appreciated and yes, although you shouldn’t do it for this reason, it will likely be reciprocated. It’s not a difficult thing to do and it will help your relationship with your friend remain stable and on solid ground.

2) Help out their family – One large source of friction in people’s lives is often the “competition” between their family and their friends for their time. It may not be articulated like that, but it can be a source of stress to a friend to have to see you in favour of their family or vice-versa. A really easy way to ease that stress in their life is to do something for their family or a family member. It doesn’t have to be huge. Pick their baby brother up from soccer practice or something. Good deeds don’t go unnoticed and your friend and their family will appreciate it. Any tension will be eased. And your friend will feel better for it.

3) Know when to back off – While good friendship will always be one of the great things in life, it can also feel smothering to some people. There are a lot of assumed expectations and you are often, in many people’s eyes, competing for time with your friend’s family and partner. A sure fire way to have a worse relationship with a good friend is to put even more pressure on them to spend time with you. Don’t be the high-maintenance friend. Give them their space and it will be appreciated. You may even find that your friend chooses to spend more time with you as you are not putting pressure on them like the others in their life.

Friendships need to be worked on. They can be the most wonderful thing in your life, but you should never take a good friend for granted. A little effort in this relationship goes a long way.