Your friends are far more than a reflection of you. They are your connections to the business world, your dating consultants, your source of laughter, and your backup in tricky situations. They often influence your life to such an extent that they almost define you.
With the right friends, life becomes more of a team approach to occasional problems. Rotten friends don't make good teammates, and losing them can be easier than quitting smoking or losing weight.
Step 1
Pay attention to the information they broadcast. Look on their Facebook pages to see how your friends want themselves to be perceived. Listen to their conversations and notice who is being discussed. Talking excessively about others makes for gossipy friends, and focusing only on themselves are self-centered friends.
Step 2
Ask for help with a project. See who answers the call, even if you are capable of handling it on your own. Make an emphatic mental note of who is there for you when you ask for help. Good friends will rush to your aid despite having perfectly valid excuses.
Step 3
Evaluate what activities you expect to share with each friend. When friends who enjoy a night of heavy drinking call, they may not be the right fit for your life. Table these friends until you want a wild night out, but don't keep them around in your day-to-day life.
Step 4
Look for one-way streets. This is an easy trap to miss because you probably feel a responsibility to help out your friends. But unless they start paying a therapist's salary to you, they had better ask about your well-being just as often as you discuss theirs.
Step 5
Clarify every lie you detect. Lying to protect others' feelings does happen, but so does lying for vanity and lying to avoid shame. Everyone has told a lie, but not everyone does so with the right intentions. Find out whether your lying friends aimed to hurt you.
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