Making and keeping friends is one the most important skills you need master for truly fulfilling life.Since early childhood we start making friends and we continue to make new friends and keep some of them for the rest of our lives. There is nothing more relaxing than a heart to heart talk with a friends. It has been said that friends are your family you that you choose for yourself. It also has been said that you are average of your 5 closest friends. So it is very important to be conscious of how you choose friends.

Unfortunately making friends is not something that is thought to us in the school as a subject, we learn it by experience. Although nobody has told you how to make friends there are many books on this subject that can help improve your friendship skills! Below are a couple of helpful tips that can help you build friendships.

First and foremost important thing in any relationship is to be yourself. It is nothing more annoying than when you see somebody acting out as s/he is not. Trust me many people recognize that fairly quickly. If you see some of your character traits are not being helpful in making new friends, start by changing yourself first, and then act the new way. Meaning be sincere if you see some advices are not you, I recommend do not apply them until you feel comfortable with the idea.

Remeber for a change to be effective you need to follow: Be-Do-Have. Be it, Do it, then you will have it easier. 

This is a communication skill that is not noticed by many, nevertheless has life/death importance in relationships. Listening means to being sincerely interested in someone and what they are saying. And it is very different from hearing! Hearing means you just hear something it can be noise, news, cell phone ring and you don’t process it much, you let it go.

When you are talking with someone it is very pleasurable to realize that the person is carefully listening to you this means you and your talk are important to that person. To show that you are sincerely listening to someone you should sincerely listen and ask for more information.

People usually love to talk about themselves and their lives but at the same time they are afraid to make you bored with their personal stuff. So if they find out that you would like to hear more about them they ganna love you!

So how do you show somebody you would like to more about them? You would ask short open ended questions like:

• How does that feel?
• What happened next?
• What are you going to do know?
• What is your plan?
• Why is that so much important to you?

And again be sincerely interested in your friend and converstation.

Now, listening is a vital part of any friendship and any conversation but it is not the whole thing. You should also contribute to the conversation. Then natural tendency when somebody is talking about their problems is to offer solutions, however be very careful with this one. Not many people are actually looking for a solution. They know the solution. They just want to talk about their problems, yes that is it. Some people just want to tell you what their problem are. So don’t offer solutions unless you are asked to.

So how do you contribute, well depends on situation. Here are some suggestions:

• Comment on their story
• Tell them about a similar situation that happened to you

In building long lasting relationships nothing helps like helping people with their problems. And that is not necessary something difficult o do. In fact you will discover that helping people can be very easy most of the times. Sometimes just a phone call can help your friend finding the right person.

Every one of us has different skills, knows certain things more than another and has different friends . So use your skills, knowledge and network to help people whenever possible. If you do that they will become your raving fans, not all of them, but surely most of them!

When you help doesn’t expect people to return the favor. Do not think of helping as a trade. Become a Helper, a helper without expectations. And you will see in time you have created such a big circle of friends you yourself would be surprised.

Ok, fine they are your friends, but you don’t have to share all your small and big problems and difficulties you are facing. It is OK to share them once in a while, but not every time. When you are telling your problems to your friends, many people feel that it is their problem as well. So if you do that many times, you might see people not wanting to communicate with you in deep levels. Why? You are giving them problems they don’t owe!

The best book on Friendships that I have cam across with is an excellent book by Dale Carnegie: “How to Win friends and influence people”. If you are serious about making and keeping friends for life this book is a must. And frankly that would probably be the only book you would need to read about friendships and influencing people.