3 Lessons on Friendship
Do you have memories as a child of going to the indoor pools? This was a weekly ritual for me as a young boy. Every Monday night my sisters and I would have swimming lessons, spending hours and hours swimming backwards and forwards. I have a confession to make, I loved swimming for a few random reasons. I would practice my singing while swimming and I would talk to myself! Writing this I kind of feel like I am confirming things that I have felt for a long time, I am strange! However, there was one thing I hated about swimming lessons. There would always be this painful time of just waiting at the end of the pool for the teacher to instruct us on our next set. I hated this time because I just felt like I didn’t know how to make friends with the other kids that were strangers. My introverted self would try to avoid the awkward conversation and swim away but over a period of time I learned how to make friends.
1. People love to talk about themselves.
This was one of the greatest things my dad ever taught me. I remember one Sunday afternoon being at the local swimming pool with my dad and sister. My sister and I were playing together when he noticed that we were not including with any of the other kids. He called us over and asked us why we hadn't made any other friends and we told him we simply didn't know how. He said, "kids one of the best ways to talk to someone you don’t know is get them to start talk about themselves, keep asking them questions about themselves."
That one tiny bit of advice has seriously helped me through so many awkward first encounters with people. Maybe you feel a bit like me and you sometimes struggle to start a conversation with someone you don’t know. This one piece of advice will help you so much. People love themselves, seriously! Ask the person you meet question about anything to do with themselves and they will not shut up. This should help you get the conversation rolling find new friends.
2. You have to be a friend to make a friend.
You need to ask yourself a question, "do you want to make new friends". Identifying this is probably a good start! If I had my way I would of gone to the swimming pool and not talked to anyone at all. Unfortunately for me I had a dad who wanted me to make friends. Terrible I know - ha-ha! At the time I hated it but now I am so THANKFUL he forced me to step out and make good friends. I learnt that day that in order to make a friend I had to be a friend. Believe it or not, people want to be friends with a friendly person!
At the time I didn’t realise it but my dad was teaching me the importance of friendship. We were created and designed for relationship. It is easy to stay in our comfort zone with the people we are already friends with but we have to get uncomfortable sometimes to make new friends. The truth is; if we are not friendly no one will want to be friends with us. Let’s put a smile on our face, be happy about life and go meet some people. Can I be annoying like my dad was to me and bug you to go be friendly and make your friendship circle bigger?
3. Quality is better then quantity.
Do you ever get as angry as I do when you dive into the pool and your goggles fall off your face? I remember being in the finals at a school swimming competition and my googles fell off as soon as I hit the water. I finished that race and my coach came up and asked what happened (he noticed me slow down at the beginning of the race). I told him that I had to fix my goggles because they kept falling off. It was then that he told me something I'll never forget. He said, "Josh do you know that quality is better then quantity?" He began to explain that he used to buy lots of cheap googles but they would always end up breaking, he then decided to only buy quality goggles. The quality googles would always last him longer and he would end up spending less money over a longer period of time.
The same rule applies for friendships. You can have a lot of “friendships” but the real question is, are they quality friendships? Or are they friendships that break every-time you dive into a rough patch? I am not writing this blog so that we can all aim to be Mr or Miss Popular, seeking the friendship and approval of every single person. After all it's easy to have superficial “friends” who won’t stick around when things get tough. However, I am writing this blog to encourage us to seek great, uplifting friendships.