Think about your life for a second.
There are many contributing factors that mold your emotions. Whether they are for the better or for the worse, you fight and struggle endlessly to find sure ways to make your life happier.
And as much as you work on this, you feel that there are many tedious areas in your life that just shoot those aspirations away.
Anywhere from a job that you desire to leave, a rocky relationship that you’re on the fence about, or even bills that keep sinking you under, you find that there is a stampede of issues with a best interest to derail your path to happiness. But unless you spend your energy in the right places, you’re never going to build a foundation of bona fide happiness.
Just for a quick second, in any point of your life, think back to when you experienced nothing but pure bliss, laughter, excitement and genuine happiness. There’s a common denominator to be found.
And what if I told you that your key to happiness was right under your nose? It is. And it’s the power of friendship that is a powerful tool in your lifelong quest.
Harness the power of friendship and you create your opportunity to tap into your happiness levels, the way your life was intended to be.
Below are significant reasons why you should look this way and see why it works.
1. Friendships Reinvigorate the Act of Goodwill
It’s no surprise that our intent to make our friends happy is our gift of kindness to them. But kindness may have a longer, even more profound effect on your happiness. Studies suggest a kind of “positive feedback loop” between kindness and happiness is increased with these jovial acts. Happiness is indeed contagious.
2. Friendships are Center Stage for Judgement
Judgement seems harsh. But judgement from a friend is valuable. Perception and compassion are two different values. And when the latter comes from a friend, it’s indispensable value helps you work on bettering your life and paving your road to happiness.
3. Friends Offer Encouragement
There’s something to be said about about the comfort that you receive from a friend’s word of encouragement. Nothing injects a jolt of inspiration more than that from a friend. Furthermore, research proves that people derive more happiness from encouragement from a friend, than that from a stranger.
4. Friendships Keep You Humble
Friends who care about you have a perspective and an angle on your behavior that no one else can completely see. This critique keeps you humble because it comes from a reliable source and one who knows you truly. The open-hearted flowing nature of happiness demands humility. When manifested properly, the two qualities of humility and happiness will be recognized not only as not mutually exclusive, but rather as quintessentially complementary.
5. Friends Share the Same Goals and Desires
Sharing goals, ambitions, and desires helps strengthen the alignment of your relationship. This alignment is critical for creating a contentful harmonious reaction and allowing you both to reach your dreams.
6. Friendships Take Joy in Laughter
“Laughter is poison to fear”—George R.R. Martin
Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing. Whether is it from an inside joke or a past experience, friends know how to fixate on triggering your enjoyment.
7. Friendships Help You Increase Your Sense of Belonging
A way to build your own sense of belonging is to work on acceptance of others. Learning to accept others and their views is the blueprint for friendship. The ideas that are not the same as yours require that you to have an open mind to the idea that there is value in everyone’s thinking. An open mind leads to an open heart.
8. Friendships Verify the Benefits of Fighting
It is human to fight. And not all fighting is negative. Fighting through discussion not physicality provides a way for you to reconnect with your friend. It encourages intimacy, comfort, and compromise, all qualities of a healthy sustainable attitude. Sharing your differences and still accepting the person creates peace and acceptance in your life.
9. Friends Help you Wash Away Your Worries
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” —Corrie ten Boom
The new perspective that friends provide you with, frees up an immense amount of time and energy that you would have dedicated otherwise towards your worries. Worry is the destroyer of happiness.
10. Friendships Protect Your Motivation
Surround yourself around good friends who better themselves. Those who radiate in negative energy will not benefit you as those who are good spirited. Those same positive friends can help cheer you on through life’s journey. Their prosperity in joy will only rub off on you.
11. Friendships Add an Additional Layer of Support
The mark of true friendship is mutual aid, regard, and concern for the other. And you’ll be happy to know that a friend is a great support system when you’re in need, good friends offer this without the expectation of gain or anything in return.
12. Friendships Can Be Leveraged
Friends are your crutch in your gloomiest moments and cheerleaders in your finest. Their accessibility is worth its weight in gold. Knowing you have this resource reaffirms a friends value in strengthening your walk towards contentment.
13. Friendships Diminish the Feeling of Loneliness
Friendships help you understand who you are and gives you the feeling of being a part of something larger than yourself. Friends with strong social connections have less stress-related health problems and lower risk of mental illness, which lends itself as another reason it helps ward off depressions and negative energy.
14. Transparency Follows Friendships
Communication transparency is clearing out your mind of old angers and resentments that may have been bottled up inside. Cultivating a friendship with a heart clear of undigested emotions ensures contentment. A friendship is communication, a friendship allows favorable feelings for you and for your friend.
15. Friendships Value The Ability to Vent
When you experience a negative feeling and emotion, such as anger or fear, you may deem it necessary to express such feelings, so as not to experience them alone.
Expressing these feelings to a friend by talking with them in a calm and rational manner can be very helpful and can actually greatly contribute to assisting in letting go of such feelings and easing the mind of bad thoughts.
16. Friendships Free Your Stress Hormones
Stress hates company. Research finds that friendships might serve as buffers against the adjustment difficulties that result from negative experiences. The research also noted that during unpleasant experiences, those who were around their friends didn’t produce as much cortisol (a stress hormone) as those who weren’t around a friend during a stressful time.
17. Friends Trigger Your Fondest Memories
The past will have many memories of happy and sad times, and most of those times spent with friends. Take what you can from the sad and turn it to something to learn from… the happy ones… bring them with you to the present since they are memories that will compliment your happiness in the future.
18. A Friend Provides Validation
Solid friendships help fill the void in validation. Relationships help people feel that they’re worthy, that they are capable, and lastly, that they can set goals and accomplish them. Which adds control and composure in your life.
19. A Friend’s Happiness is Contagious
Misery may not love company —but happiness does. It is essential for you to stay connected and engaged with other people, specifically, your friends. Countless studies have shown maintaining rich, meaningful relationships and social interaction is a key benfit towards mental health, which inturn helps fight chronic depression.
20. Friendships Help Elevate Your Mood
In addition to squashing your stress, your social relationships may also have a positive influence on your overall mood. Research has found that making new friends can lift your spirits through the release of oxytocin (feel good chemicals) in the body.
21. Friends Compliment Your Success
When strong bonds are developed, your achievements become their achievements.
This form of organic well-being is a trait most friends acquire over time. Having that emotional backing is a positive step towards being happy and peaceful.
22. A Friendship Allows You To Make Things Work
A truly genuine act of compromise would find that a friend of yours is not expecting anything in return out of the gesture. The relationship that bounces compromise from one another will find a much more fulfilling existence and friendships that ultimately helps crystallizes into fulfillment.
23. Friends Criticize For the Better You
True friends have no hesitation about being honest with you. They know you well and are able to tell it like it is. They have your best interests at heart. Which fundamentally, is to make you happy at the end.
24. Friendships Add a Fresh Perspective
We are all individuals, with different experiences and opinions, but having a best friend to share their opinions with you can help you learn new things about your life. The things they share with you can open your eyes to new ideas and ways to think about the world around you. By bringing a fresh perspective to a problem, things have a better chance of changing in your life.
25. The Journey of Friendship is a Life Lesson
When a close friend does something you disagree with, there’s an increase in likelihood that you’ll confront them and discuss the issue, as oppose to a stranger, which you have no incentive of going the extra mile to talk in order to find a solution. Getting through these difficult moments with a close friend prepares you for other times in life where you will need to face a similar difficult situations. An optimistic person only knows how to find solutions in life’s darkest moments.
26. Loyalty and Friendship Go Hand in Hand
Loyalty is something money cannot buy. Loyalty means never having to worry about someone spilling your secrets or talking about you behind your back. Great friendships are built on this very foundation, which is synonymous to faithfulness, devotion, and trueheartedness. All qualities that supplement well-being.
27. A Friend Teaches Personal Growth
You and your friends interact within closely held boundaries and reveal emotions, discuss strengths and weakness and life’s unique moments. Time is the building block of friendship. Going through a life with friends helps you shape strong qualities about you that get you to your goal to a happy life.
28. The Everlasting Feeling of Friendship Makes You Happy
Milestones in your life add a sense of gratification, but can also wear off shortly after it materializes, which is also known as adaptation. But building friendships are quite the opposite and seem to be an exception to that rule. Your friends continually give you new reasons to be happy over time. This sprouts beautifully through the resiliency of time. And help you blossom in life.
“A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
—Aristotle
The beauty of it all isn’t just what you’ll acquire or what your friend will gain, it’s a more subtle shift in the overall picture.
The intimacy and exchange of each other’s feelings and ideas helps you become understanding. Knowing that life is for the betterment of yourself but more so for those around you.
And with that key understanding, it creates a soft circle of positive and contagious happiness for all those involved around your life.
No man is an island. We are all just extensions of this beautiful happy world.
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