Ways to Grow Through Your Friendships

5 Ways to Grow Through Your Friendships

In last week’s article, we discussed how friendships can boost your productivity. In this week’s article, I want to discuss ways you can grow through these friendships and why it is important to maintain them.

Discuss Your Goals

Everyone needs someone to listen to them. This is where friends come in. You can discuss your short and long term goals with them in order to receive either feedback on what is realistic or support in some way. 

If you have followed my content for a while, you will know, I am all about making realistic goals because achieving them is more likely. If you make not-so-realistic goals, it can be defeating and demotivating for you, which will make you less productive. 

Sometimes, friends can see our boundaries and capabilities better than we can. OR, on the flip side, they can push you to make more aggressive realistic goals. For example, if you want to run a mile a day, a friend could say that you are able to run 2 miles a day. They will not let you sell yourself short!

Ask for Advice

In line with creating and discussing realistic goals with friends, you can also ask them for advice. This can be in the creation of goals, but in other things in general. 

• How would they handle this particular business proposal?

• Can they review a paper you have been writing and give some improvement tips?

• Do they know of any tricks to keep a dog from barking during a Zoom call?

• ETC. 

Listen to their Experiences/Observations

Of course, you should listen to their experiences and suggestions if you ask for advice, but this isn’t just for when YOU ask for advice.

Friends talk. During the conversation, a story or two might come out about a friend’s lived experience and or observation that was meant just for sharing and not as advice for you. 

However, maybe you might learn something from that story. Maybe it will jog a memory of yours or start an idea for your own goals. Always keep an ear open because you never know when a friend will impart wisdom your way. 

Utilize their Networks

Further with wisdom, we are not with our friends 24/7. This means, they probably have other friends and associates they communicate with. If your friend cannot help you, maybe someone they know can.

First, reach out to your specific friend, of course. But then, ask them if they can also reach out within their networks to see if someone can help you.

Sometimes it takes a few brains to develop a solution!

Test Run Ideas

Just like any of the listed above reasons how you can grow with friendships, you can test run ideas through your friends. 

This combines discussing goals, listening to friends, and asking for advice, but it is different because this involves more than just talking. Test running ideas requires your friends to actually do something. 

For example, say you want to start a cafe or an online course. When you have your friends test run your idea, they are actively trying your consumable goods at the cafe or taking your online course. 

This definitely is more energy and time on the side of your friends, but that is what friendship is for! And, on top of that, you will receive open feedback that can help you improve your idea/project.

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