35 ways to make lasting friends

MAKING FRIENDS: Some tips on finding friends, others are about how to deepen a friendship.

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Do you have good friends? Do you make friends easily or is it hard work? I’ve collected 35 tips for you on how to create lasting friendships.

Some of the tips are about finding friends, others are about how to deepen a friendship once it’s formed. Finally there are some points on how to repair a friend.

What's your definition of a friend?

Zen Master John Tarrant says the following in this book, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life: It's common to feel lonely, to think of yourself as something small and solitary in the vastness of things.

It’s easy then to think of a friend as a home territory carved out of that vastness, a kind of living diary for sharing and storing the feelings of the day so that life can go on more or less as usual.

Yet there are other kinds of friendships that don’t just assuage loneliness but undermine it by changing your understanding of who you are.

Good friends help us to understand who we really are. To create and enjoy lasting friendships takes effort and skill. Some people make friends easily, but for many of us making and keeping friends isn’t always easy.

Here is a list of 35 ways of creating and cultivating lasting friendships.

1.Know yourself. In order to make friends, we need to know who we are. You may want to check out this article and work out what is special about you. If you are not clear on what your life purpose is, these questions will help you.

2. Check whether you really want to have friends. If you’re secretly afraid of people, or don’t trust other, you will find it difficult to make friends.

3. Spend time around people. You can’t find friends in the cupboard.

4. Be kind. Look at what you can do for other to make their life easier.

5. Be steady and dependable. Be a friend one can count on.