3 Forgotten Friendship Skills Any Woman Can Benefit From Learning
Positive friendships make life more meaningful.
Koto Images via Shutterstock | JMB Studio via Canva I have always been a very positive, outgoing woman, but I've lived most of my life without positive female friendships. So, I decided to make a concerted effort to cultivate friendships with healthy, inspiring, communicative women.
I learned a lot while taking on this project. Not just about how to make friends, but also about myself.
Here are 3 forgotten friendship skills any woman can benefit from learning
1. Be the type of friend you'd like to have
So, you must become the type of woman you want to befriend. To avoid needy women, don't be needy. If you want confident friends, you'll need to exude confidence yourself.
This first step has great benefits because when you become the type of woman you want as a friend, you become your own first, positive female friend. Think about it. If you want to be around someone inspiring, has confidence, lives with purpose, and has developed healthy communication, just think of the great company you'll be in when you become that woman. As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, "You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."
Becoming your own best friend is extra important because attracting positive female friendships may take some time. You may need to go alone to social functions occasionally until you attract the friends you seek. It will be much more fun and will help build your confidence if, in addition to feeling good about yourself, you feel good being with yourself, as shown in Women & Therapy Journal.
2. Trust the process
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Write down the characteristics you want in a friend. We already discussed a few good ones above so feel free to start with those. Then, visualize a fun lunch date at a coffee shop or a weekend getaway with your girlfriends. Maybe you'd like to begin with single female friends so you can bounce around dating strategies together.
Remember that friendship is a process. You will get to encourage and support your friends and they will do the same for you. Sometimes the conversation will be equal and sometimes it will be all about the one of you who needs some help. As you become the woman you want to be, this will become a piece of cake.
3. Trust your gut
Gut feelings are survival instincts we were born with. The job of our gut is to keep us alive. If that sounds a bit harsh for this topic, let me explain how your gut is vital to what we're talking about.
Since gut feelings (you may call them instincts or women's intuition) came before logic and politeness, your gut is raw and true and will always lead you in the right direction. The only time we get into trouble is when we ignore or second-guess our instincts.
Life coach Jean Walters elaborated, "Every one of us has a connection to our inner guidance system. It is ever-present and available. This intuitive guidance is always active and speaking to us. It can come through as a gut feeling, an image (you can visualize where you lost your wallet), a sign (you hit every stop light at every intersection or a book you need to read falls on your head), or a knowing (an absolute definite feeling of how things really are). Trusting these feelings give you a lightness. When you go against it, you feel heavy, lack energy, and feel a kind of deadness."
As a former personal safety trainer and self-defense instructor, I've always taught people to acknowledge, trust, and follow their gut feelings. It's a three-step process just like cultivating positive female friends is. If you miss one step, the process won't work.
Those are my three steps to cultivating positive female friendships and you may wonder why it's all about you. That's because it is. If we don't currently have the type of friends we would like to have, something in us needs adjustment. It is truly that simple and I speak from experience.
I'm in my 50's and I have the best, most positive female friendships I've had in my entire life and they become deeper and more meaningful every single day, so I know how important these friendships are to women.
Kelly Rudolph is a Certified Life Coach and Hypnotherapist who helps her clients manage stress and experience personal growth through greater confidence.