The Healing Benefits of Friendship

Research has shown that healthy friendships are good for your mental health. It is essential that every human being needs to feel a sense of support and importance and your friendships with others can actually help you achieve this.

If you have read or watched the movie "Harry Potter (and the order of the phoenix)" you will realize that almost at the end of the movie, in the scene where Harry Potter was fighting with the villain, the thought of his friends & their love and support for him gave him the strength and courage to overcome the villain.

Benefits of friendships include:

Inspiration: Friends inspire you to do stuff you are too lazy or too scared to do. If you have been postponing starting an exercise class or jogging a couple of miles in the morning and a friend suggests he or she would be willing to help you achieve your goal, because he or she wants to lose a few pounds too. You will find that this will encourage you to start the project sooner rather than later because you have a friend who you can share the experience with. In other words, friends inspire us to succeed, because believe it or not, the human being is designed for companionship.

Support and Encouragement: When we are going through trying times in our lives, we turn to our friends for support and encouragement because our friends help us heal. And besides, talking to your friend(s) is better than talking to a therapist. Why? Because you can talk to your friend(s) for FREE.

Friends can help you deal with emotional pains, such as divorce, losing a job, losing a family member etc. Your friend(s) can encourage you to be the best you can be. Have you ever wondered why people with so many friends are more likable than people without friends?

Dependability: When you keep close-knit friendships and your friends all look up to you for advice/counsel, it only goes to show that you are dependable which in turn is good for your health. Because as you help your friends by giving them sound advice, and they come back to you with good news of how your advice worked, you will feel a sense joy and your heart will be the better for it.

Improvement: Your friends can help you grow socially, academically, financially an et cetera. Have you noticed that most people only improve on themselves just because a friend of theirs has done the same? Our friends help us improve on ourselves and set the bar higher, because a typical human being does not want to be perceived as a loser. For example:

Friendship with well mannered people will help you improve on your social etiquette.

Friendship with fashionable people will help you improve on your fashion sense.

Friendship with very religious people will improve your relationship with God etc.

Wholesome friendships will also help you build self-esteem but please note that the quality of friendship far supersedes the quantity. If you have one close friend to share life's joy with, then it's okay, because it's better than having a load of two-faced, back stabbing and treacherous friends.