Friends

How can friends affect your life
Almost everyone knows that their friends can affect their life in a way or another but what most people don't know is that this effect is far more powerful than they can imagine.
Your friends don't just influence your decisions but they can alter your view of the world, change your perception and turn you into a different person!!
In this article i am going to tell you how can friends affect your life and how powerful is their influence.
The ways your friends affect your life • They change your beliefs about things: Beliefs can be changed if they were constantly challenged and if new beliefs were constantly repeated. Lots of my friends had a pessimistic view of the job market before they even had the chance to interact with it. This pessimistic view came from the continues programming they received from their friends in the form of suggestions that are repeated over and over such as "its extremely hard to find a job these days" • They affect your self confidence: Friends Alter the perception of each other, if the majority of a group thinks that a person is arrogant or snobbish then this belief will be transferred to the whole group. Since believing that someone is treating you in a bad way might be interpreted as a sign that shows that you are not that worthy then such a belief might affect your self confidence badly. In the Solid Self confidence program i explained how this shared perception can lower the self confidence of the whole group including you if you were one of them • Your friends affect your behavior: An experiment has shown that a monkey that never feared snakes started to fear them when it saw the anxious response of another monkey that feared them!! This means that watching someone who is feeling afraid, anxious or helpless could teach you how to be like him!! (See how fears are learned) • Your friends can infect you with bad emotions: Why do you think you experience different emotions while watching a movie? Simply because the facial expressions of actors transfers to you their emotional states and the same happens with your friends. Your sad friend might make you feel sad and your depressed friend can let you become depressed on the long term (see How emotions affect communications)
So how to prevent your friends from affecting you?
Don't worry you don't have to change your friends but what you must do is to become conscious of the facts that were mentioned in this article and to filter everything that you hear or see.
Don't accept your friends' view of the world, their beliefs or their opinions without proper realistic filtration. That would be enough to protect you.
The human survival is based on friendship. From the highest authority to the lowest bums living on the streets all of them have experienced in some way or the other one of these different kinds of friendships. We take this friendship for granted because it is something that exists naturally in society and most of us never really have to actually go out into the world looking for a friend. Those of us who have had to live in a foreign country or in new surroundings have learned how important this is in life. My personal realization came when I had to start college in a new country, in different surroundings. The feeling of loneliness is enough to drive a person to near madness.
Friendship is a necessary aspect of every human’s life, as we are not self sufficient in and of ourselves (Other Selves, pg. 30). Despite its necessity, in some cases we are either forced or morally required to end these relationships. When the trust between two parties has been broken, the loyalty of the friendship is soiled, and it is therefore a true and just action to end the friendship.

First, let’s define what it means to be a friend. Friends can be described as: “an intimate associate, reliable, one who is not an enemy or foe, an ally, etc” (Webster’s, pg. 540). Thus, based upon the definition of a friend, we can assert that friends should not betray one another, regardless of the circumstance. This is true, if and only if, it is in the best interest of the friend.

Secondly, trust is an issue that every platonic friendship must deal with. Whether dealing with matters of trust is active or passive, its power is still a prevalent and pertinent quality that is mutually understood. Trust is an unwritten rule between friends and is defined as the “firm belief or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability, justice, etc of another person.” (Webster’s, pg. 1436) Trust is also described as “faith”(Webster’s, pg. 1436). When using a word such as “faith,” that describes a substantial belief in one another, it is very difficult to argue that breaking the trust of the friendship is ever in the best interest of the friend. Everyone is affected by certain events or individuals that greatly change their life. Many people have influenced me during my 21 years of my life, but I believe that the person that has influenced my life the most is a wonderful girl by the name of Lindsay Schiller. In the year that I have known her, she has become one of my best friends, and has helped to transform me from a lonely computer nerd into a happy college student with a decent social life. Popular wisdom has it that, "You judge a man by his friends." Earlier in my life, that would have been difficult, because my father was a high school football coach, and it seemed as though every year I was moving to a new school and trying to make new friends. After moving throughout my middle school and most of my high school years I decided to concentrate mostly on school and computers, paying little attention to life outside my studies. My high grades made me the target of torment during most of my middle school years, the name calling: nerd, geek, and worse, was so bad that I was ostracized by some of the class, and I shielded myself by further isolation. My high school experience was no different. I was still a loner. All the school dances and parties passed by, and I found other, solitary ways to occupy myself. I rarely took time to hang out with fellow students during weekends or vacation time.