Earlier this week, I posted a Peek Into Our Week post. One of the questions I received in response to that post was, “How do you have so many great friendships? How do you find friendships like this?” I started to respond to this question as a comment and my response got so long, I decided to turn it into a post. 
For years, I didn’t have many close friends. I had many acquaintances, but very few people in my life with whom I could be completely honest.
I was insecure and a people-pleaser, so I always held back in relationships. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or come across in the wrong way. Because of this, I usually just didn’t share things I was thinking about, working through, or struggling with at a deep level.
While this allowed me to not get so hurt in relationships and kept me more “safe”, it also meant that I felt lonely much of the time. I wanted to have close friendships, but I was scared of opening up and being vulnerable.
My personal journey from insecurity to confidence has transformed me from the inside out. And it’s also given me courage to step outside of the safe zone and reach out to people around me in an authentic way.
It’s taken years to get to this place, but I am so blessed to now have a group of really close friends. Friends who would drop everything to help me. Friends who I can share anything with and they will listen and won’t think I’m crazy (or maybe they think I’m crazy sometimes, but they still love me!). Friends who are life-giving. Friends who love me enough to have earned the right to speak the truth to me when I need to hear it. Friends who I just LOVE hanging out with and sharing life with.
It’s a beautiful thing to have relationships and community like this. But it didn’t happen overnight. For me, here were the three keys that helped me build these close friendships:
1. I Became Authentic & Vulnerable
If you want to build close relationships, it starts with being honest and authentic to who you are. A few years ago, I had this revelation: if I wanted people to love me for exactly who I was, I had to be exactly who I was when I was with them.
I had to stop trying to please whoever I was with, say what they’d want me to say, and walk on egg shells for fear of offending them. Instead, I just needed to be me — warts, short-comings, and all.
This doesn’t mean I need to air my dirty laundry for everyone nor does it mean I shouldn’t be considerate or use deference, but it does mean that I am committed to being authentic and real in my relationships.
If someone asks me how I am, I want to be honest in my response instead of just saying a pat answer like, “I’m fine.” If I’ve had a bad day or am struggling with something, I want to be vulnerable enough to at least briefly share this. If I want people to be authentic with me, I’ve got to be willing to open myself up and share about my messes, struggles, and short-comings, too.
2. I’ve Made People a Priority
Strong friendships don’t just happen; they are the result of lots of nurturing and cultivating. They are borne out of the investment of time, resources, and energy.
As a Type-A Driver personality who is also introverted, I can make productivity paramount to everything. But long term, this isn’t healthy and it’s also a sure-fire way to ruin relationships.
I’m learning that strong relationships require being willing to sacrifice and go outside my comfort zone to bless someone else. It’s not always convenient, but it’s always worth it.
One thing that has helped me balance productivity with making people a priority is to look for ways to incorporate friends into things I’m already doing. For instance, if you’re going to an event, ask someone to come with you. If you’re headed on an errand, ask someone to join you. If you’re working on a project, see if there’s someone who might like to come over and join you.
3. I Look for Specific Ways to Show I Care
You might feel like you just don’t have time to invest in friendships. I disagree. We all have time (or can make the time) to show people we care.
And it doesn’t have to take hours and hours of time. Look for little pockets of time throughout the day to invest in people you know. Here are a few ideas:
- When you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, text someone to let them know you’re thinking of them or to just check in and see how they are doing.
- When you are waiting in the carpool pick-up line, jot a quick note to someone who is going through a rough patch and mail it to them.
- When you are working on laundry or cleaning, call someone to check up on them.
- If you have a free evening or weekend, invite someone over to join you for dinner, a game, or a movie.
- If you see a great deal on something someone you know loves, shoot them a quick text to let them know. Or better yet, buy it for them and surprise them with it “just because”.
Always be looking for opportunities to reach out and bless someone else. Ask questions and take time to really listen to the responses. Be a giver. Pour into others.
There are so many blessings in living your life with outstretched arms. Plus, some of the deepest relationships will often blossom out of your willingness to take the time to show someone you care about them.
What advice do the rest of you have for building great friendships? I’d love to hear!
Want more encouragement on friendship? Read my posts on How Do You Find Good Friends? and How Do You Find Time to Be a Friend?
For awhile now, I’ve been thinking it’d be fun to have a feature called “How I Saved Today”. This would just be a short post about a specific way I had saved money that day. I can’t promise it will happen every single day, but I’m going to try it out here (hopefully a few times per week) and we’ll see how it goes.
I wear contacts almost full-time as they seem to work better for my eye sight. But I also wear these special glasses when I use the computer.
{The optometrists here will know what I’m referring to, but I’m not sure of the official name of these glasses. I just know that my eye doctor prescribed them to me while I was writing my last book and said they would cause my eyes not to get focused and locked in — which was causing my eyesight to go downhill. I get so focused on what I’m doing that I’ll forget to look up occasionally like you’re supposed to do to help your eyes not get locked in on any one thing. So these glasses are supposed to help with that. Anything to protect my eyesight from going downhill while I work on the computer and write books? I’m all for it!}
Last week, the screw fell out of my glasses. We searched high and low and could not find the screw anywhere.
I wore the glasses without the screw, but the lens kept falling out. I knew I needed a long-term solution, but I also knew that I don’t have an eye doctor here in TN yet. So going somewhere to get my glasses fixed would kind of necessitate having to also schedule an eye exam. Which would cost money out of pocket that we didn’t need to spend since I’m not due for another eye exam for a while.
I thought about taping the glasses together, but knew that would just bug me. So instead, I bought an inexpensive eye glass repair kit and fixed the glasses myself.
It took me all of 5 minutes and they are good as new. Best of all, the eye glass repair kit came with extra screws so I can fix the problem in the future if it happens again to my glasses or Jesse’s glasses.
A simple solution, a few minutes of time, and quite a bit of money saved = totally my kind of thing!
How have you saved money today? Also, would you be interested in me regularly running a How I Saved Today feature here? Leave a comment and let me know if it’s something that would interest you.
