To Friendships!

About a year ago I wrote an article about toxic friendships - and judging by the many comments we received, that article resonated with many of you. As you'd expect, there was some backlash too, and some people who really didn't like it. To them it felt too close to the bone and as a consequence it generated some heated discussions and exchanges, which made me realise that I was certainly on to something.

After much reflection, the whole experience led me to realise just how important friendships are and how they really affect our wellbeing and touch our lives in very profound ways. It also made me realise how important it is to be mindful about our friendships, and pay as much attention to them as we do to other aspects of our lives. The quality of our friendships has a direct impact on our happiness, wellbeing and perhaps even physical and mental health.

I recently completed an online Positive Psychology course through a wonderful US based website called Mentor Coach. The course was taken by one of the leaders in the field, Professor Chris Peterson, who is the chair of the Values In Action (VIA) Institute. When asked during the course for the single best piece of advice the field has for us, Professor Peterson replied 'having great relationships in your life'. He went on to say that although the field is focused on building on our strengths, if an individual has problems building meaningful relationships with others, then as responsible coaching practitioners we have a duty to work on that area of development, because meaningful relationships and the ability to build them is a necessary condition to wellbeing.

Relationship Matter

We are social animals. This is how we survived the harsh savannas of our ancestors. We grouped together, allocated roles and we hunted and we gathered and we looked after our young, together. On our own we could have never made it and survived to pass our genes on. In every story, movie andplay on people who ended up in isolation, the common theme is always how the lack of human contact was the most difficult aspect. Think of Tom Hanks in Castaway, talking to his "friend", Wilson, who was in fact a basketball. We miss people, and it is our relationships with others that we remember the most and that define us the most.

There is a wonderful Hebrew saying, 'show me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are'. This saying is echoed in many other languages; in essence, I think we all acknowledge that we can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Elsewhere I wrote about values, and our friendship choices certainly reflect the values we hold. In this article I decided to examine friendships and their influence? on our lives through different lenses and of course give some practical suggestions along the way. I hope you'll find my musings thought provoking and I hope you'll reflect on yourself as a friend and your friendship choices and find ways to enhance this extremely important aspect of your lives.

Cross Cultural Friendships

Having been a migrant to this country, I still remember vividly how hard it was to leave my Israeli girlfriends behind and how sorely I missed them on a daily basis. I was married and have a great relationship with my husband, but there was something substantially different about that female camaraderie and being with people who understood my cultural background. I am still friends with my childhood girlfriends. We write, talk on the phone and Skype and when we go back for a visit, it's like we've never parted even if four years go by and we've had children inbetween!

Moving to a new country with such different social expectations was far harder than I anticipated and it took me a long while to find true friendships. For someone used to having close female friends that experience was really hard. And I am sure many of you who may have moved here from another country or even from another part of New Zealand would agree.

Nowadays I can honestly now say that I have the most amazing girlfriends here in New Zealand for which I am really grateful. But my initial experiences led me to think about how so many of the norms of friendship can be culturally different and are so subtle that we are completely unaware of them more often than not. I think of other migrants and how hard it must be for them, too, because so much of friendship is subtle and often unconscious, and misunderstandings can happen so easily.

For example, I now know that in New Zealand it is normal for friendships to take a long while to form, and even longer to become truly close. Not only are Kiwis naturally reserved, they also have a slower sense of time. As an Israeli visitor once told me, in New Zealand there is no news, "just current affairs". What she meant was that in Israel, the news stories are forever updating, whereas here we take our time, processing a story for an entire day and sometimes weeks.

Once I began to understand just how different friendships are here and to adapt, I made wonderful friendships that feel so natural and so balanced. So much so, that when we visit Israel my Israeli friends tell me how Kiwi I have become, being reserved and stand offish, taking my time with friendships!

On women and friendships

Women's friendships are very different to men's and you don't need a PhD to figure that out. I watch my daughter and my son and see how stereotypically different their friendships are. The girls use so many more words - they build complex hierarchies of best friends, former best friends and future best friends, whereas for the boys it's really about who's got the coolest toys.

Women's friendships can have a devastating affect on our wellbeing because they are so emotionally meaningful to us. From an evolutionary psychology point of view, I read somewhere that because women were left behind to care for the young while gathering and preparing meals etc, they learnt how to build complex social networks - more so than men because of the natures of the tasks they did. What I really liked was how our great great great grandmothers in those savannas had to have long memories to know who can be trusted to look after the young and who couldn't. Something many of us (myself included) have perfected since!

I think a big part of why I received so much feedback on the Toxic Friendship article was because many of you recognised the devastating affect unhealthy friendships can have on us. I think more often than not we don't consciously and mindfully reflect on our friendships and only realise things in hindsight. Perhaps that is why it struck such a chord.

Through my personal experience, and that of those around me, as well as my professional experience with many women whom I coach, I realise how central good women friends are to our wellbeing. In Professionelle, we often hear of professional women who either immigrated here or moved from another part of New Zealand and who really feel isolated because they haven't yet been able to find like minded women to make friends with. Often they tell this to us with slight embarrassment - which they absolutely shouldn't feel, as women friends ARE that important.

Being the best friend you can be

There are many books about being the best mum, the best dressed executive, the best lover and what not, but I have yet to see a book dedicated to being the best friend you can be. And I think someone should write it! How often do we think about how to be a good friend? How often do you reflect on what makes you a good friend? And on what others do to you that makes you appreciate them?

Now, back to Positive Psychology and its monumental contribution in the form of Signature Strengths. If you haven't yet, make sure you take the Signature Strengths 40 minutes online survey which is available for free here. I use Signature Strengths extensively in all my work and especially when I coach and facilitate, but one of the biggest messages that comes from the field of Positive Psychology is that, first and foremost, you have to practise what you preach to be any good. Because I truly believe that, I try to bring Signature Strengths into my own life - and into my friendships. My friends will probably not be surprised to find out that my top signature strengths include Wisdom, Judgment, Curiosity and Social Intelligence.

There are so many ways you can apply your signature strengths to enhance your friendships and be the best friend you can be. For example, if one of your strengths is Curiosity, you could make a point to find out something you didn't know about your friend next time you see them. (This one is one of my favourites and I have to try and not be 'the Spanish Inquisitor' with my questions ;)). If one of your strengths is the Capacity to Love and be Loved, you could always think of new and different ways to exercise your strength, be it through offering to do a shop for a girlfriend whose child is sick or through organising a 40th surprise party. The thing about using your signature strengths is that everyone wins. You win because it is so rewarding using your signature strength and your friends win because through using them, you ARE a better friend. And the important bit is to have friends who love and value you for the strengths you have.

When you are mindful about your friendships, all of a sudden they become much more than a nice thing to have. It took me many years but I am now so conscious of how important my friendships are to my ability to do all I can do, that I treat my friendships and spending time with the girls with exactly the same level of respect as I do my paid work. Gone are the days where I viewed being with a friend as a luxury to be afforded only after my 'real' work was done. I now view it as one of the most important fuels that keep me going!

I hope I have got you thinking about your friendships, what they mean to you and how you can practically be the best friend that you can be. I especially hope you'll go out to dinner with your best girls and make a toast to friendships!

© Professionelle Ltd 2009