Surely you have many friends, good, sincere, those who have accompanied you for many years of your life and appreciate you.
Friends are like an unlimited bank account, you can always count on them, they have no funds, and like an ATM, they are available 24 hours a day.
They are important to spend good times and take away the importance of the things in life, they help you laugh at your circumstances.
You have a problem and they help you, you have two and they reappear, unpayable.
I will not discover anything that can mean a friend that you do not know anymore.
The advice I want to give you this week is that among all your «bank of friends», when something «critical» happens to you, get together with the one who, far from encouraging you, gives you a real and not always pleasant vision of the problem or situation that It worries you, the one who behaves in a «critical» way. One who, far from telling you that nothing happens or gives you false hopes, sits by your side and recognizes that the situation is dodgy.
The one that before anything serious happened to you was already the one that:
- told you that you were not so handsome, that you could take care of yourself and improve and that it would be good if you went to the gym
- told you that your work is a bit miserable and that it would be a good idea to look for another
- …
The one who, in short, the one who did not paint your life in pink but showed you that dark gray in which he sometimes places you.
I do not mean a pessimist or a friend who exaggerates what happens to you but someone sincere to accompany you without trying to take away or give importance to what happens to you, to whom you can explain how you live and feel what is happening to you without ambages.
If you want to improve your appearance, you need someone to tell you that you have to get fit, if you have problems with your partner or problems with your teenage children, to someone who will advise you a good therapist.
A «critical» friend, the one who in critical situations does not diminish or dress them, but rather he or she undress them and expose them with all their harshness in order that values in their proper measure, and give them the perspective necessary to help you plan better how to take the first steps to get out of them.
There are times when you meet a friend who, in good faith, tells you that «you will see how everything is solved» when you know that there is no solution, the one that uses with good intentions the hackneyed phrase «for every disadvantage there is an advantage «, or the one who gets so sad about what happens to you that you have to end up encouraging him or her. They are all good friends, although in critical situations they do not help you.
It helps you who laughs with you, the one who distracts you or accompanies you without nothing to add, the one who does not advise you all the time but listens to you, the one who does not take away the issue, but above all, who rolls up the sleeps and goes to work with you…
You do not need a «excessively clear person» or a «Supercounselor», it’s not that, you need someone who is realistic, who does not comfort you and gives you reason because he considers those are the values of friendship, but simply he or she simply is and is practical.
You need someone who listens to you and has common sense to be able to talk about what is happening to you comfortably without judging what is happening, and help you to clarify yourself in the middle of the noise, to order the avalanche of emotions, feelings and thoughts that crowd in your head and you do not know when, how or with whom to order them.
Be able to tell your thoughts, clarify how you feel and order your ideas a little bit, even if you do not solve what happens it helps you to feel that you have the reins again not about what happens to you but about what you feel because of it and, most important, the reins of yourself.
In a critical situation you need a critical friend. Let’s have a coffee?
