How to Choose good friend Wisely
Think you don’t get to choose who you’re friends with? You get just as much say about who your friends are as they do. Making friends is one thing, but choosing who your friends are is incredibly important because your friends are your guides in life as well as the people who help define who you are. In some ways, they are family. Some friends are closer to you than others, but who you choose to share important parts of your life with matters.
Choose a Friend Who is Honest
A friend that is honest is one of the best friends you can have. Trust and honesty are cornerstones in any relationship. Choosing a friend who can tell you how it is will be something you’ll appreciate greatly (albeit, you may not always appreciate it in that particular moment, you’ll look back on it and appreciate it later…really). An honest friend will keep you from walking out of the house wearing that awful green shirt or tell you that the girl you’re going to ask out isn’t interested. They’re supportive in their honesty, and you should choose someone you know will not lie.
Choose a Friend Who Gets Your Quirks, Oddities, and Weird Sense of Humor
Friends need to laugh together. We like our good times in life, and sometimes the best times come from our own odd character traits. Choose a friend who gets those quirks and can laugh with you rather than at you. After all, if you choose a friend who gets your odd sense of humor, it’s likely they have one, too. Look for someone who will laugh with you at a look or a glance. Those people will be some of your best friends. They don’t put you down for the things that make you different; they embrace them!
Choose a Friend Who Stands By You in the Tough Times
It’s so easy for us to be good friends in the fun times. There are all kinds of laughter and joyful moments, and those times make relationships easy. But who are the people who stand by you when times turn tough? Those are your true friends. Those are the people that get that life doesn’t always go the way we plan. It’s much harder to stand by someone that’s having a tough time, so choosing a friend that is strong enough to be the shoulder to cry on or hold your hand when it’s needed is a wise choice.
Choose a Friend Who Gives as Much as They Take
We’ve all had friends that only want things from us, but they never seem willing to give to us when we need it. Relationships involve compromise. Sometimes you’re going to do what your friend wants to do, even though it’s not quite your thing, and sometimes she is going to do what you want to do, even though it’s not quite their thing. When a relationship is one-sided, we end up feeling resentful and angry. It’s not healthy. Choose a friend with whom you feel a balance of give and take.
Choose a Friend Who Likes the Things You Do
While friendship is full of compromise, it helps if you choose friends who share a lot of your interests. It gives you things to talk about or share. It makes deciding on stuff to do easier. You don’t have to choose a friend who likes every single little thing you do, but you should have some shared interests.
3 Things to Remember When Choosing Friends
These are principles I think are essential. Choose your friends wisely. Choose them for the sake of friendship. It seems like such an obvious statement, but my parents used to say it to us all the time. Don’t choose friends because they are popular, or because they are good-looking, or because they are rich or athletic. Choose your friends wisely because you enjoy them and because they are good people.
Remember, friendship runs in two ways. Too often, we evaluate a friendship based on the way it benefits us. But lasting friendships are formed when we can cause those benefits to flow toward someone else. So here is a question for you, what benefits do you bring to your friendships? We seem so quick to categorize others, so quick to determine people’s worth based on what they can do for us, what they drive or wear, or what their occupation is. Choose your friends for the sake of friendship – their friendship with you, and more importantly, your friendship with them. Here are 3 things to teach kids about choosing friends.
1. Choose Friends Who Exhibit Good Character
Choose your friends based on their values, not their status in society. Within our extended family, I had a number of uncles who worked very different jobs. One was a high-ranking member of law enforcement, another was an autoworker, and another was a baker. It never occurred to me that these positions might carry value; to me, each of them was my uncle –they all loved me and looked out for me, and I cared for them all. Their value, for me and others who knew them, was not determined by their job titles but by the men they were twenty-four hours a day, whether working at their jobs, hanging out at home, or doing something else in their communities.
2. Choose Friends Who Are Dependable
Choose friends who will stand by and guide you when you need them. Friends who put your interests before their own. Number one on my list of those friends is my bride of more years than she might care to remember – Lauren. Hers has been a voice of encouragement, love, character, and godly wisdom for well beyond the years of our marriage. In fact, that is one of the things that attracted me to her. Her voice has always carried messages of importance, pointing me toward what is right and what is in my best interest. Those messages have shaped my character amid the lure and glamour of a world that is constantly trying to make me detour from the path that God has set before me.
3. Choose Friends Who Give Wise Counsel
There are other voices of wisdom in my life as well, friends whose counsel I often seek before making the really important decisions of my life. People who see the same direction for my life that I see- God’s direction. I also have friends who will correct and admonish me when it’s necessary. Too many of us listen to the voices of the crowd, even when we know better. Often, we do this simply because there are many voices and they are the loudest: the voices of ambition, power, wealth, revenge, greed, pleasure, self-centeredness, and appeasement. But even while all these voices bombard us, we need to learn to listen to the quiet voices consistently speaking the truth. Those voices come from our wives or our parents or our close friends, those people who have been with us in the valleys and on the mountaintops of our journeys.
by
TONY