12 Reasons Friends Are Just The Best!

From helping you boost self-confidence to helping with longevity, here are 12 reasons friends are just the best!

As an adult, you may find it hard to meet new people and make new friends, and while you may have some great friendships from childhood which are essential to keep hold of, as people’s lives move on, people move away, get married, have children and their priorities change.

When life gets in the way, friendships can often take a back seat to other priorities, such as work or looking after your children or your aging parents.

It is still essential, however, to have friends who are close by and people you can rely on and talk to regularly.

Developing and keeping good, stable friendships takes effort, and you have to put the work in.

However, the enjoyment and comfort a good friendship can provide,  makes the investment and effort worthwhile.

What Are Mates For?

Having friends is fantastic, who doesn’t love their friends? But did you know that having friends is more beneficial than it just feeling great and having someone to have fun with?

Having friends is beneficial for our health and wellbeing and here are a few more reasons why your friends are great, so you should go out and celebrate with them.  

1. Friends Teach Us How To Socialise

From a very young age, when we make friends, this is how we learn to interact with people socially.

Even the ones we have totally different opinions to and the ones that are the opposite to us, we learn from them, and we learn how to have relationships.

Friends teach us how to forgive, how to laugh, and how to make conversation. They teach us how to have relationships because the foundations of any romantic relationship or working relationship begin with friendship.

We learn from our friends not just how to talk to people, but what makes other people tick, our friends push us out of our comfort zones, but at the same time they let us be completely ourselves. 

2. Friends Keep Us Mentally and Physically Strong

To be mentally and physically healthy, you need to have good friends. This is a benefit of your friends which is often overlooked and maybe just taken for granted or goes unnoticed.

According to a recent Harvard study, having solid friendships in our life helps promote brain health. Having good friends is just as crucial to your physical and mental health as eating well and keeping fit.

So, when you’re feeling guilty over not going to the gym because you went out for a laugh with your friends, don’t worry about it! 

Related: 10 Things Mentally Strong People Do Not Do!

3. Friends Help Us Deal With Stress

Spending time with positive friends can be one of the best things we can do for our stress levels.

Not just because we can vent to our friends, talk things over and get sound advice but because positive people can change our outlook for the better.

Spending time with happy people is so good for your health, so if you have toxic friendships, life is too short, and it’s essential for your health to cut them out.

Friends help us to make better lifestyle choices; they help to keep us strong and allow us to recover from health problems or relationship breakdowns more quickly. 

Related: 11 Ways You Need To Overcome Stress!

4. Friends Help Us Weather The Storm

While friends can’t completely cure loneliness or always solve your problems and make everything okay, they can’t cure a family member of cancer or bring a grandparent back to life, but they can help us during the painful and bad times, they can lend you money if you need it or help you to get bad credit loans with a guarantor.

Friends teach us how to accept kindness and how to reach out to others when we need help.

They also help us to appreciate the friendships that come in and out of our lives.

Having a steady stream of friends lets us know that some friendships won’t last forever, but with each one, there is something special, and it might lead us onto other things or other people. 

5. Friends Improve the Quality of Life

Having people to chat to, people to laugh with, cry with, make memories with, meet other people with and experience new things with is all essential in building a full life.

You know that it can’t always be sunshine and rainbows, but if you have good friends to share the fun times with then when you fall on hard times, friends are there to put things in perspective and to help you.

When we have success, they’re happy for us and ready to celebrate with us. Healthy friendships make us thrive. 

6. Friends Keep You Brain Sharp

According to research from Northwestern University people over the age of 80 who had more positive social relationships also had the memory function of middle-aged adults.

It is no real surprise that social integration, engagement with family, and emotional support from a social network are positively associated with cognitive function in older adults.

So keep your mates, and you’ll stay sharp and witty together. 

Related: 10 Ways To Be More Creative!

7. Friends Can Help You Live Longer

Another study from George Mason University found that the people who had more support were more likely to live longer. 

8. Friends Can Boost Your Career

According to research by the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University, women who frequently check in with two or three women in their friendship circle or have female-dominated inner circles are more likely to land higher-ranking leadership positions.

Don’t feel guilty about going for those after-work drinks with your pals because having strong friendships can help provide networking and mentoring opportunities for career development and advancement.

9. Friends Can Motivate You 

If you’re looking to start exercising, want to embark on a healthier diet, save money or do more good deed, take a look at your mates because you may find that you have more success if your friends eat healthily, go to the gym or save money.

It’s good to hang around with people that can have a positive influence on us and encourage us to meet our goals.

Similarly,  if we have friends who smoke, spend impulsively, or have chaotic relationship patterns, we are more likely to mimic those same behaviors in our own life, so have a look at your social circle and if you’re all feeling like you could do with a change in lifestyle then do it together and help each other out. 

According to research by the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University, women who frequently check in with two or three women in their friendship circle or have female-dominated inner circles are more likely to land… Share on X

10. Friends Help To Boost Your Self-Esteem

Having friends, you can rely on can help to boost your self-esteem. Your friends can build you up, make you feel special, make you feel good about yourself, tell you when you’re too harsh on yourself and remind you what a great person you are and why they love you. 

11. Friends Teach You About Yourself

Friends can be honest with you when no one else will be; they can pull you up on behaviors or point out something about you that you didn’t realize or had been denying to yourself.

When you look at your friends and the kinds of people they are, you learn a lot about who you are too.

Your friendships are often a reflection of you and who you are and who you want to be.  

12. Friends Help You To Feel Better

Number 12 of the 12 reasons friends are just the best is…

At the end of the day, friends are there and help you to be happy. Feel better when you are sad and have fun with.

You choose your friends whereas you can’t choose your family so the relationships with the friends you choose can often be even more critical and have more of an influence on you and your life than your relationships with family members do. 

How Can You Make New Friends?

If you’re feeling a little low on friends or you have moved somewhere new and need to make new friends then, first of all, have a look at the people you already know.

You might well have overlooked potential friends who are already in your social network.

Is there anyone you have met, even briefly who you have worked with, taken classes with, seen on the school run and waved to.

Perhaps there’s someone you have been friends in the past, but have since lost touch, any friends of friends you have enjoyed chatting with at social gatherings or any friends of friends that you may not know but could meet up with? 

If you can think of anyone you’d like to know better, reach out to them, make an effort.

If you have a mutual friend you could ask them to reintroduce you or if not then find them on social media and just send a message and see if they want to meet up for coffee or lunch.

To meet new and potential friends, you need to be in the right places, so join groups – online and offline, take up a hobby and start going to places regularly so that people see your face.

Don’t limit yourself to just one way of meeting new people — the broader your efforts, the greater your likelihood of success.

Being persistent also makes a difference, so take the initiative rather than waiting for people to come to you, and keep trying.

You may need to suggest plans a few times before you get anywhere, so don’t give up. 

A study from George Mason University found that the people who had more support were more likely to live longer.  Share on X

There you have it. 12 reasons friends are just the best!

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