Essay on Friendship: Communication Skills as the Key to Success
Since early childhood, friendships play an important role in everyone’s life. Socializing and communicating with peers is important for a balanced individual development. Friends can have a serious impact on a person’s views and lifestyle. For this reason, parents often try to control their children’s choice of friends. Although friendships can mean many things to many people, having a support team you can rely on in the hardest times of your life has positive effects on a person’s psychological wellbeing.
Living in a society, every individual becomes its inseparable part. Socialization is arguably one of the most important stages of personal development, which predetermines further success in life. Having to connect with an incredible number of other people, a person finds someone sharing his/her interests and life views. There are conflicting views on whether a friend in need is a friend indeed, or a friend in happiness is a true friend. True friends can share both good and bad events, feeling sympathy or happiness, depending on the situation. Friendships should be tested by the time. Going to the cinema together once doesn’t make people friends. Going through hard times together is much more important for understanding what a particular relationship is worth. The moral support and advice of friends are among the greatest life values. The ability to make friends and build positive relations with others is an important condition for succeeding in life. Although it can be hard to define the thin line between friends and acquaintances, everyone needs both of them.
Spending time with friends can be good for a person’s health and nervous system. Relaxing after a hard working day and discussing all the good and bad events with friends has similar effects as a visit to a professional psychotherapist. On one hand, friends can support a person, saying the valuable words of encouragement in hard times. On the other hand, friends can dare open a person’s eyes saying the hard truth when it’s really necessary. For instance, true friends can give a helpful advice when a person has to choose a college or college major. Another important aspect of communication with friends is relations with the opposite sex. Friends have the power for healing the broken hearts and they are never tired of listening to the stories about a person’s happy or not so happy dates. Though people can make friends in various places, school and college friendships are the most common ones. In many cases, friends get lost with the course of the time. Going to different colleges, building families of their own, people often lack time for their old friends. Therefore, the friendships that last longer are valued higher.
Along with its positive effects, friendship has the reverse side, including the negative influence of friends and the stress caused by friendship betrayals. It is important to be selective when choosing friends. The people we communicate with can have a significant impact on our behavior, lifestyles and life views. Thus, a person can try smoking or alcohol for the first time under the influence of friends. If a group of friends is doing something, it becomes a norm to them. In that regard, various addictions and other negative behavior patterns can be the result of the influence of a bad crowd. Some people can have difficulties making friends. Others are too quick to consider people they hardly know as their close friends. Both extremes can be dangerous and can have negative consequences for individuals who lack proper understanding of the friendship mechanisms.
Friendships which are an important part of every person’s life can have a significant impact on a person’s communication skills, self-esteem and lifestyles. To avoid the negative effects of friendships that can go wrong, a person should be selective when making friends and take time to get to know a person before considering him or her as a close friend.