how to be an awesome friend

How to be an Awesome Friend.

How to be an awesome friend. This video is all about how to be the ideal shoulder to cry on. There are times when friends turn to friends to vent about a problem or even to discuss a possible solution to an issue. It is really important to listen more than anything and then ‘coach’ the perfect answer from the individual, as studies have shown that if a person comes to a conclusion on their own, they are more likely to follow through with it.

Naturally if your friend comes to you with a problem, your natural instinct is, because you care about them, is you want to provide a solution for them. You can sometimes get quite passionate about the situation or find it overbearing. You may have a friend that has done this to you.

This can often come back to energy transfer, so that is why gossip is very popular. People like to gossip because they like to be the bearer of news, you want to say ‘uh…did you know this…did you know that…’. This is when a friend comes to you and starts venting and telling you their problems or something that’s happened to them, your natural instinct is to give them energy because you want to give them the answers and advice. Then in return from that you, as the friend, feel good about it and believe you have helped them.

Ultimately, for the person to get the real advice they need, they need to come to the conclusion by themselves. So your role as the best friend in the whole wide world, is to coach those answers out of them. Therefore learning to be a coach, asking the correct questions at the right time to allow them to explore their own feelings a little bit more.

One of the best things you can do if someone is venting is to let them keep going and get every last bit out of them, because once it is all out, they can the pick and chose which points actually made sense, which were the relevant points and which points were just complete nonsense.

The key here initially is to listen, let them vent and listen to their problem. There are situations sometimes where all the individual wants to do is just simply vent. Complain about their job, for example! This is where you, as the friend and ear to vent to, need to work out if they are just simply venting and if they are just let them and say nothing.

I think everyone can honk of a time when all they needed to was just let off some steam and have a moan and feel instantly better once they have. Now imagine you have vented to a close friend and they have come back with certain actions they advise you to take, then once you have done what they said you immediately regret it! Which is why we say to try and decide if they are just venting or if they need the solution coached out if them. If this is the case then you need to ask open ended questions. Especially in cases when someone is so annoyed or heated up about something, you then don’t want to add fuel to that fire! Therefore, if you just listen then that rage will die out and the fire will fade and you can then pick and chose from the ashes which bits are relevant.