6 Steps to Choosing a True Friend

December 29, 2020 178

It’s time to get that friend

I must say that there is a dearth of true friends lately. Many are called they say, but few are choosen. In a world fraught with deceitful people how do you know who your friend truly is. How will you know who to give access to your life and consequently those dear to you. Many lives have been ruined because of poor choice of friends. A wrong friend in your life can cause a damage you might not be able to fix without indelible scars in your life, that is if you are alive to do the fixing.

In a world like ours where the choices we are confronted with daily are enormous, one needs God’s guidance to make the right ones. I feel deep empathy for people who do not have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as it is the only sure way to be led by His spirit that lives and directs the lives of those who believe in Him. Am talking about lives totally surrendered to Him so He can lead you even when it is not pleasing to your emotions or soul. Please do not say here we go, another preacher; because I am talking based on experience. How I wish I know what I know now then, I certainly would have made different choices in many areas of my life. So today I bring you counsel that works for many without regrets and now working for me too. By the way nothing in this life works outside the wisdom of God in Christ. Tell me any good thing that has come to stay that did not emanate from the good book. The earlier one comes to terms with this truth, the better life is for that person. Please follow this link to make Jesus the Lord of your life.https://www.learnreligions.com/a-prayer-of-salvation-701284

In this life we are presented with myriad choices spanning from financial, political, religious, socio –cultural to health, beauty, family, fashion, lifestyle, peer pressure, social media engagements, and so many others. The person who makes the right choice in most of the above listed areas of life is the one who will live triumphant, despite all odds. But your life will not be so cool if you are drawn and tossed about by just anything or any person. Wisdom and understanding is highly needed these days to make any choice. This wisdom is the God kind and that is what most of the topics from this platform will be addressing. In this post we will look at how wisdom can direct you to who your real and true friend is. Please follow this link if you want to give your life over to be guided always by God.https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/prayer/the-sinners-prayer-4-examples.html

In this quest for true friends there are basic things to do and some of them are encompassed in these 6 steps.

1. Pray to God asking Him to guide you in this search

The best and most successful way to get and do anything right is by committing it to God and soliciting His help in a divine way. Nothing just happens and so we must be trusting and hoping in God to direct our every move if we will have true success in all areas of our lives. All through the bible we see how successful all those that first enquired of the Lord before embarking on anything were especially King David. No wonder He never lost any battle except for Character weaknesses that had deep consequences in his life and family, and many were the battles he fought [c1] .

So before you embark on this friendship quest, pray asking God to help you choose a friend that will have godly influence over your life even as you do so for the person. When I gave my life wholly to the Lord incredible things began to happen. God began to reveal the nature of everyone that was to play a role in my life either positively or otherwise. the fact however was that I never took most of the warnings He was showing to me seriously. I went ahead and related with these people only to be disappointed by their conducts later. If you seek the Lord with a sincere heart and a right motive, He will divinely direct you to true friends and other good things. As you pay attention to warning signs He might reveal to you and heed His counsel, you will hardly go wrong in your choice of true friend or friends.

2. Be sensitive to the voice of your Spirit and not just your gut

You should let God guide you after you have prayed. You must bring to bear all the information you have gleaned over time about the people you want to bring into your life. It is tempting to make your choice based on gut instinct alone. I have realized that a lot of the time people make life threatening decisions based only on their gut instincts. I am not saying that using your gut instinct is not good but it should not be the sole reason for major decisions in your life.

Moira Alexander writing on “Risks and rewards of making project decisions based on gut feelings”said that gut feeling can be used “when there’s an absence of factual data and precise measurement is not required”. He continued by saying that ‘In combination with other information and data, a gut feeling can be a strong ally if bias is removed from the equation and factual information comprises the majority of the decision’. Then again I like how he put it here “if gut feelings are used as a substitute for common sense or sound judgment based on concrete data, you run the risk of missing signs of trouble’. He goes further to say that people should ‘resist the urge to allow a gut feeling to override important fact- and figure-based calculations, as they serve a specific purpose, and offer precise information to ensure key performance indicators (KPI) are identified, captured and documented. These KPIs will need to be referred to if issues arise later ”.https://www.techrepublic.com/article/risks-and-rewards-of-making-project-decisions-based-on-gut-feelings/

In choosing your friends I will suggest that instead of using your gut instinct alone you should combine it with “The Rational Model of Decision Making” This model is the most commonly used model and consists of the following steps.

Identification of problem or opportunity and in this case choosing a true friend
Gathering and organizing relevant information which here involves inquiring from God, people and other sources including your personal experience about the nature and character of the proposed friend or friends.
Analyzing the situation will entail your processing all the information from God, people, your-self and other sources [ like social media engagements], filtering them and examination how what you have found out will impact your life in that relationship.
Developing a range of options which will be either to desist in going ahead with the proposed friendship, to keep the person as an acquaintance or to disengage totally.
Evaluating and assigning a value to each option which will involve weighing all the character traits of this friend or friends and focusing on the strength of the good traits as against the weak ones especially if the weak ones are areas where you are strong.
Selecting the options, you feel is the best which will be choosing the person whose strength of character exceeds those of others, is more comparable to you and really makes you happy.
Acting decisively on that option. This is where you not only have choosen who your friend or friends will be and going ahead and telling them and beginning that friendship in an exemplary manner.

3.Use ‘The Why Tree’ questioning Technique

This is to determine what it is you are really looking for in this friendship and what you are willing to bring to it too. Ask your-self what your motives are for the friendship you are about to cultivate and how you intend to sustain it. Remember ‘The Why Tree Analysis’ as discussed in my earlier post on “8 reasons why people end up not having friends”. It is a questioning technique that goes beyond the symptoms of any problem and gets to it’s underlying cause. In this case your line of questioning will include questions like these:

Why do I need this friend or what kind of friend am I hoping to get?
What are the qualities I want this person to have?
What am I contributing to making this friendship work?
What will I not be able to tolerate in this friendship if it’s initiated?
What are the boundaries I should set to give me the space I need? Etc

As you ask yourself these question, make sure you keep digging deeper on each one till you get to the core and primary answer to your question. Let us examine the first one here which is

Q. Why do I need this friend or what kind of friend am I hoping to get?

A. I need a friend to hang out with

Q. Why do I need to hang out with just this person?

A. Because this person makes me happy

Q. Why am I happy with this person?

A. Because this person makes me laugh often and am free to talk about anything unhindered

Q. Why do I feel free to talk about anything unhindered?

A. Because this person gives me rapt attention and is easy to be and talk with

Q. why do I think this person gives me rapt attention and is easy to be and talk with?

A. Because that seems to be this person’s personality trait

Have you seen how deep these questioning process can take you. See how you were able to get to the fact that this friend of yours has a unique personality that is vital to the success of any relationship. This questioning technique will always help you get to the core reason for all the choices you make in every area of your life. So as you search out the reasons for choosing this friend instead of others, also dig into what you intend to bring on board so as to sustain the friendship. The reason why so many of us fail to have successful outcomes with some of our life’s endeavours is because we were spontaneous in our decisions. Life is not that simple. There are consequences for every choice we make daily and so we must choose right to avoid the pitfalls of wrong choices.

4. Evaluate the people in your life and seek out those that possess the desired traits of true friendship, prayerfully.

As seen earlier in ‘the rational decision making process’ above, you now dig deeper as you evaluate every potential friend to be able to choose the one that will have more positive influence over your life. The ‘why tree questioning technique’ will also help you make the right choice. After you have made up your mind on whom to befriend, you go back and present your choice to God and ask Him to help you sustain the relationship. Ask for help to be a beacon of hope and a true friend for this person so that it is not just about meeting your own needs. Most times what you put in is what you also get.

For this evaluation process, these are issues to be mindful of before you choose a friend. As you follow the why questioning technique below, you will conduct this evaluation favourably.

Are both of you equally invested in this friendship. Has this person been investing resources of human and material sort in the right proportion as you?
How does this friend make you feel? Do you feel comfortable and worthy of who you really are with this friend or do you feel undermined frequently?
Is your friend full of negative vibes? Is he or she an eternal pessimist and a bearer of bad news? Does your mood always go on a down ward trend any time he or she shows up?
Is your conversation balanced? Does this friend overshadow and dominate in your conversations? Is it always about this friend’s issues and never about yours?
Does this friend respect boundaries? Or are boundaries constantly violated and disregarded without valid justification.
Is this friend competitive? Do you feel this inner conflict around this friend? When you record any visible success does this friend genuinely rejoice with you or do you feel and sense envy from him or her.
Are there character flaws that might influence you negatively? Is your friend given to drinking, smoking, gossiping etc and possibly tries to draw you into these vices too?
Do you see this friendship spanning ten years and more? Do you feel deeply connected to this friend and believe that you will grow old together?

There are so many questions to ask about people around you to help you decide who your real friends are. As you find answers to these questions, you will be able to evaluate without bias who to commit to. The challenges of this ‘new normal’ time we have found ourselves in, leaves us no idle time to waste on people who will not add value to your lives.

5. When you have made the choice of who to befriend, call that one to what I call “the table talk”

After you have made your choice let that person know you have choosen him or her as your true friend. Call him or her to the table talk. “The table talk [c1] ” as I like to call it is that part where both of you comes to the table for a one on one talk about what you both want out of the friendship. With your writing materials ready, you all seat down to chart the way forward. The vision, mission, goals and specific objectives for the relationship should be penned down. Strategies and activities that will enable you guys achieve your overall vision for your friendship is also discussed and documented.

I know what you might be thinking. All these for just friendship!. Yes my dear, all these for friendship. Check out the lives of people who have a strong friendship support system in their lives and see how successful and happy they are. In contrast check out the lives of the friendless isolated and reclusive people you know and compare how their lives also turned out. True friendship and strong family system is everything. I have also talked about the benefit of having true friends in my post “ 5 reasons why you must work on having friends”.

As you set your goals and objectives please ensure they are SMART.

S -Specific. Be specific as concerning every issue that will most likely crop up in the relationship

M -Measurable. Every goal or objective set must be measured and have means of verification [MOV]

A –Attainable. Ensure you do not set unachievable goals or objectives. Start small and grow big later

R –Realistic. Keep it real. Do not be over ambitious, bite what you guys can chew. One day at a time

T -Time bound. Tie every activity to time and finally Monitor and Evaluate your progress as the relationship progresses.

Have a way of evaluating and monitoring the progress you guys make on monthly or quarterly basis depending on what works for you and your new friend. This is where you both re-evaluate your objectives to see if you are achieving them or not. If you are not, it means you might need to rework the strategies and so adjust or change the activities around each specific objective. What all these mean is that as you plan on the pathway for this friendship, try not to put a lot of pressure on yourself so you do not wear yourselves out and defeat the very essence of the friendship.

If friendship is taken seriously and given all that it needs our lives and world will certainly be a better place to live in. There will be less friction amongst friends. Conflicts will be rare, health challenges will be reduced, quality of lives will be improved as committed people share of their time and resources. All these will reflect back in our communities and we will have a thriving healthy society. True friendship is actually what most marriages lack and so fail, and that is why those that marry their friends last and thrive better in marriage.

6. Then enter the relationship with good motives and with a lot of patience

We human are always in a hurry to getting what our heart’s desire, but in the choice of a friend we need to exercise a lot of patience. The decision of who to befriend might seem small but it has the potential and power to alter the course of your life for either good or bad. I have personally realized that anytime I am in hurry towards having any need in my life met, I make mistakes. So lately I have choosen to slow down, do my enquiries from God as well as research and get counsel from experts on any issue that I am dealing with. Armed with balanced information I then proceed cautiously. Time for impulsive and emotion laden decisions have taken the back seat in my life, and I advise you do same.

Impatience has landed a lot of people into ugly situations that they would have avoided if only they waited and done their due diligence before engaging. In this friendship journey a lot of patience is needed. As you study one another with individual traits unraveled daily, you will learn to manage your differences nicely. However, you must know that people have the tendency to spring surprises at others and so the person you think you know so well can do something totally overwhelming and with a capacity to rock your world. This might cause you to doubt your choice of this person as a friend in the first place. But if this person is good to you and you really like him or her, you will recover from it and continue with your friendship though cautiously this time. And like the good book said, you must learn to forgive fast always but the choice of continuing the friendship is dependent on the gravity of the offence committed. Offences like physical violence, malicious damage of one’s character and many others are not cool. When things like these occur it is alright to take a break and reevaluate the friendship.

I wish you well in your choice of a true friend.

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