BFF’s Keep us From True Best Friends

Last night, six of us discussed what it takes and what it means to be a Best/”Remarkable” Friend.  The discussion got intense, when it was suggested that there may come a time that our “best” friends will become our “good” friends.

The concept of BFFs keep us stuck, stifling our ability to make new Best Friends or “Remarkable” friends.  The part that stops us is the word “Forever”.  By saying this person is going to stay your Best Friend Forever, you chain yourself to an unsustainable concept.  You feel guilt as new people move into your life and old friends’ lives diverge with yours. Is it okay to have the level of friendship ebb and flow?

After this initial shock, people expressed a sense of relief in realizing that maybe those former BFF’s from High School or College don’t all have to be maintained for life.  They can be part of a larger circle of good friends.

“That is so freeing!” one gal sighed.

Just because someone is no longer your BFF, does not mean that you don’t care for the person.  They may have moved on as well, or need to move on to people who share their stage of life or live in their own town.  Now both of you are free to give and receive in a relationship that may be even more suitable.

I contend that letting friends go from Best Friends to a Good Friend is a positive thing.

What do you think?  Does it bother you to think of letting a former BFF simply become a good friend? Or does it give you freedom?

“Time Equals Friendship” is Untimely Advice

“Your friends will know you better in the first minute they meet you than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.”- Richard Bach

Can time help friendship?  Maybe.  Can time create friendship? NO!  Friendship is created by being intentional to trust one another.

Ask yourself, “how close am I to my boss?” Think about how much time you spend with your boss.  You even talk A LOT.

What about your old college buddy?  How much time do you spend together? Yet your relationship is likely much stronger than that with your boss.  Your relationship is defined differently with each person.

I was in a small group that met every week.  When I say every week, I mean every Thursday night for a couple of years.  Did we ever get to a deep and real friendship?  I am sad to say-Nope.  Time didn’t work for that group.

The group we are in now formally meets once a month and we share a much, much closer friendship.  Why?  Because we have intentionally set out to trust one another and have defined the relationship as such.  We’ve invited each other into our daily lives–recitals, basketball games, and spontaneous dinners.

Intentionally asking someone to be a dear friend  speeds friendship like microwaving a cookie from the freezer versus putting it outside in December to thaw.

I am Lonely. Uhhh, Errr, Oops. I Mean I am Busy.

“I am lonely.”  Wait!  We aren’t supposed to say those words.  What I meant to say was, “I am too busy on really important stuff that lesser stuff like relationships are going to have to wait.”

Have you noticed that our value in life is measured by how busy we appear?  When was the last time you asked someone, “how is life going?’ and they said, “Quite well.  I have a great relationships with my spouse, kids and friends.  We make less money and we aren’t too busy so we can enjoy those relationships.”? If someone said that to us, we’d stand there with a blank stare not knowing what to say.

The socially correct answer to how we are doing is, “I’m busy.”  I am busy working long hours.  I am busy driving my kids to practice.  I am busy at Farmville.  I am busy paying off the new TV and car.  I just wish life was slower.

If we are that busy, then how could we possibly squeeze in time for others?  Here is the shocking reality: we don’t have time or energy for friendship, so we are quite lonely.  Sure, we know lots of people at work and have a strong network for business.  What about someone that knows my marriage is not so good or my middle child is giving us fits? For myself, I have noticed that my iphone, internet, espn, etc, make it easy for me to appear busy and avoid connecting with those I really want to connect with.  Sitting at practices with other parents has not provided me the depth of relationship that it promised.  The only thing that works for me is an intentional time to focus on building that friendship.

What would you do if someone responded to your question of how they are doing, with, “I am lonely.  And I don’t know how to change my life.”?

Refusing to ask for helps hurts others-for real

“Refusing to ask for help when you need it is refusing someone the chance to be helpful.” – Ric Ocasek (yes, the Cars guy)

My house had the usual unkept areas on the side of the house.  And maybe some in the garage.  And some in the backyard.  And a little more in the hall closet.  You get the idea.

If I was at work and had a problem I couldn’t solve, what would I do?  I’d ask a co-worker for help.   Why not try that in my personal life!  So, I emailed two friends, because I was embarrassed to actually say the words over the phone, “I need help cleaning up around our house.”  So the email went out and the response was-”Sure.”  So, the following Saturday, our friends came over to help us clean up.  An amazing thing happened.  We got months worth of work done in an afternoon.  The bike hanger was finally built and installed.  The side yard was finally cleaned.  Junk was put into the back of the truck for the dump.  Good stuff was put away.  The garage was organized.

The truly, truly incredible part was that my friend said, “You worthless bum.  I can’t believe your house isn’t in perfect order.”

NO WAY!!!

He said, “I am HONORED that you ASKED for my HELP.  This was actually fun to help someone else.”  Then he said something really interesting, “I can see how being in a relationship where you can ask for help and trust one another makes life better.”

We all have areas where we are weak and someone else is strong.  Allowing a friend to use that gift fills their tank and strengthens the relationship.

Let’s bring back the concept of community barn-raising.

4 ways to clear your mind via covenant friends

1.  You can air your deep hurts, failures and concerns. The simple act of speaking the hurts, concerns and failures begins to kill their power over you.  When they are brought out so others can see, their power to trap us starts to be broken.  Your mind can begin to let them go from the hamster wheel of stuck to the road to recovery.

2. Relieve stress by having someone carry the burden with you. After you have shared your hurts, failures or concerns, a covenant friend is going to carry that with you.  They will walk with their arm around you to help you take the next step forward.  The stress no longer has the kind of power over you to keep you up at night.

3.  Hear from someone who loves you, the thing you can’t see. When we get in a rut and can’t see our destructive behavior, a covenant friend will love us enough to tell us what we cannot see.  You may have heard, “The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy.”  Their input has more value, because you know they truly love you.  Your mind can go from rage, confusion, or sadness to a clear next step forward.

4.  Be loved. There is great power in knowing that we are loved and have a place of belonging.  When we fall, there is a hand waiting to help out.  This is a place to let all the masks and pretense fall away without fear of being unwanted or rejected.

 

Finding your true love is like looking for a new job

“Last year, Karen Jordan methodically told friends, family and acquaintances that she was looking to meet a man who was ‘kind, generous, accomplished yet humble.’  ’To me, it’s just like when you are looking for a new job,’ says the owner of a Los Angeles skin-care company.  ’It’s a matter of asking for help.’” (New York Times,  Scary New Dating Site: the Real World. March 22,2011.)

What?  Is love going to be found the same way as you find a job? Networking?  Being intentional?  Telling others that you are looking for a committed relationship?  Making yourself vulnerable by stating your hope for the relationship?

Amen, I say!  The honesty is refreshing.  Finding someone for a relationship that might led to marriage or finding a deep real friend is getting harder and harder in our fast-paced society.

Wouldn’t it be great if we allowed people to say the same things about deep, real friendships.  My suggestion is that we drop the cultural stigma and allow people to honestly say, “I want a relationship with a deep, real friend.  Can you help me?”

Three Steps to Accelerate Friendship

Can you accelerate your friendship?  Is it possible to put a friendship in the relational microwave to heat it up?  Here are 3 things that have helped me accelerate my friendship.

1.  Ask someone to be your friend. Many people don’t believe that you can ask people to be a friend.  Or the falsely believe that it is too risky are unwilling to take the emotional risk of putting themselves out there.  Yet, few things will accelerate your friendship like this.  You now have permission to engage in each other lives.  There is a newfound security in knowing that you have both agreed to build a friendship.

2.  Be vulnerable, especially  in an area of a struggle. Open up to the other person about something significant about yourself, like a hurt,  a dream or a difficultly in your life.   If you can tell them about a fault or failure, then others realize that they don’t have to perfect.  The false facade of perfection is destroyed and they can now identify with you in a deeper way.

3.  Have them over to your house for dinner.  Few things will connect you to people like sharing a meal inside your home or apartment.  It can even be a take-out meal.  Being in a home is much more personal and relaxing than meeting in a restaurant.  Also,  when you  show them your entire house, every room you’ll find trust can develop more quickly.  It is when they see your messy bathroom or overstuffed closet that they realize that you are just like them.  Think of the things new friends will learn about you when they see your pictures, crafts, collections, color choices and even messes!   Keith Ferrazzi has build a whole business around having people over for dinner.

I have found friendships are like many things in life–the more intentional you are, the more quickly you reach your goal.  Friendship can be accelerated.  I can share stories of fruit of intentional friendship and the failure of random friendship.

Are there other ways you could accelerate your friendship?

Is it Better to Give than to Receive?

The phrase, “It is better to give than to receive” is a true statement.  But, is there ever a time that we need to receive?  What about in relationships?  Is it always better to give than to receive?

We may actually avoid receiving from others as an excuse to keep people out.  We use the excuse that we don’t need anything from anyone.  While we try to live our lives never asking for help, we rob ourselves and our friends.  We miss the blessing of being helped and they remain unable to help and held at arm’s length from our lives.

I recently had lunch with a friend and  self-made-man who has just gone through a difficult health situation.  Being financially successful and independent, he has rarely felt the need to call on anyone for help.  His ill-health led him to the point of an organ transplant and a real need–an organ donor.  Amazingly, for him, this experience has been crucial in deepening his relationships with those around him.

We do need each other.  Western culture with its rugged individualism steals the joy that comes from sharing in community.  Maybe we could look at accepting help from others as a way of making them feel wanted and useful.

When we receive, we give.  When we give, we receive!

Do you have a time that you helped someone and felt the blessing of helping them?  Do you remember receiving from someone and seeing how blessed they felt to give?

Planned friendship create deep friendship

There is a common thinking that friendships aren’t to be planned.  They are supposed to happen organically.  You know how it goes.  You get together at the kid’s birthday parties and the Super Bowl.  Other than that we randomly get together.

My experience has found that when you plan to get together you have a built in advantage to make the relationship more meaningful.  We were hanging out with friends over the weekend.  One lives in another state.  As he left, I thought, I don’t know if I am going to see him again.  I hope he comes through again.  And this is a really good friend, not just a friend.  Internally, I watched myself say, I’d like to deepen this friendship, but I don’t know when we will be together again.

Contrast that with friends that I had spent time with a couple of weeks ago, when we didn’t say good bye. we said, see you 3 weeks at the Jones’ house.  Internally, I saw myself wanting to put more into that relationship.

Here is my proposition:  Go to the people in your life that you want to know deeper and ask if they would agree to get together for dinner once a month.  Plan the next 3 months right there.  Host them at your place.  Get take out food is great.  Just make sure you eat in your house or theirs.

The number one obstacle:  Time?  Nope.  It is Priority.  Do both of you view this relationship as a high enough priority to make the time?   When friends are not that high of priority, other things crowd in and take your time.  As you do less together, the relationship shrinks more and more over time.  You may pick up where you left off, yet in reality you have not deepened and probably shrunk a little in depth.

What would it take for you to plan 3 months of gathering with your friends?

3 steps to reduce your stress via covenant friends

When you feel like you are in quicksand with no hope of getting out, you may realize that there is a friend that has thrown a rope to pull you out.  But they can’t pull you out until you let them know you have ahold of the rope and are ready and willing for them to pull you out.

When the downs of life come, you don’t have to carry  them by yourself.  You can bring them out into the light of friendship and watch them shrink.  What are the three steps? Share Fully, Ask Tangibly and Call Again.

Step 1: Share your problems honestly and fully with your friends.  This allows you to bring it out into the open.  You start to kill the power of the issues, by admitting the real issue.  Often, we like to make our problems seem smaller than they really are or we tend to focus on the wrong perspective of the problem (often blaming others).  In the safe place of covenant friends, we can share the real issues that are causing the problems.  There is no need for masks to make ourselves look better.  By addressing the real problem, we can gain clarity of thought.

Step 2:  Ask them to help in a tangible way. Because you have been completely honest about the real issue, ask your friend for tangible help in a specific area.  For some this will be prayer.  For others, it will be a referral.  For others it will be help with a physical need.  For other it will be intervention.   The mutual benefits are rewarding as you find relief and they experience joy.

Step 3:  Call your covenant friend again. You are going to need their support again.  We fear looking like a fool, because we have fallen back into the same mindset or situation again.  That wrong voice in your head says you should do better than this and you should be ashamed if you say you need help in the same way.  You mind-read what your friend is thinking about you.

Realize you have the opportunity to make their day by being honest and asking for their help.  Your covenant friends are eager to support you.