#FriendshipGoals

Having a 12 year daughter and being a Life Coach makes for many interesting conversations. Like many 12 year old girls, her friendships are of the utmost importance.

She isn’t super into boys yet, so everything is about her friends, so when something goes wrong, which happens often with middle school girls, the world is ending, or it often seems.

I know many Mothers have many conversations with their daughters over these things. My perspective on everything has absolutely changed since becoming a Life Coach. All relationships, even those of middle school girls.

One of the girls from school has 500 social media friends, and gets tons of likes. (I am fully aware of the irony of posting this on social media). We ended up having a conversation about how many good friends does one need?

It would be impossible to keep up 500 IRL friendships now wouldn’t it? 500 birthdays, anniversaries, daily check-ins and coffees/double dates would be incredibly time consuming. Don’t get me started on keeping up on 500 good friends lives, their significant others information, where they are going on vacation, why exactly their Mother in Law makes them nuts, the names of their pets…

“Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.“
– Brene Brown.

Since I am devoting July to Goals, I have to ask:

What are your Friendships Goals?
Have you ever thought of such a thing?
I have as has my daughter, because I made her 🙂

It is a rather interesting exercise because as a kid, an authority figure never ever sits us down and says “Today, kids we are going to learn how to be a Good Friend”.

Nope, but being a friend, selecting a friend, and maintaining the relationship can be one of the most important skills we have in our lives

What are the top 3 things you look for in a friend? I will go first
-Honesty
-Humor
-Awareness

Now am I that first? You were not expecting that now were you? We often are so focused on what others aren’t we don’t take a good look at ourselves.

What if all the time I spent thinking about how my friends weren’t as caring as I hoped, or that they all forgot my birthday AGAIN or I how feel more special, I refocused on my own efforts to be what I said I valued most?

This is not to say I deserved it when a friend let me down. It is to suggest that we should show up as the friend we want to be first versus expecting Princess Charming to fall from the sky and see how great we are through our grumpy, poor me self?

Not very likely now is it?
Like attracts Like.
So grumpy attracts grumpy.

My daughter is currently at sleep away camp and I spent a great deal of time before she left coaching her when she wasn’t so sure about going.

Concern over friends were a large portion of the coaching and having #friendshipgoals. Showing her that she could decide what sort of friends she had not wait for others to pick her changed her outlook 100% and the energy she put out into the world.

It was as if I flipped a lightswitch on her back and it went from unsure to glowing.

In a world of likes, social media and the Real Housewives it can seen like we need 7 or so friends in which to go on vacation with and tell everything to.

Now, if you have that many people you can truly be yourself with and you trust and love and that is returned, that is fabulous. Please cherish it.

If you have 1 or 2, then that is also fabulous. Just love them and remember how lucky you truly are.

Tomorrow: The 4th of July, Benjamin Franklin and the 13 Virtues.