How to become a better friend: a curious simple way

How to become a better friend: a curious simple way

I spent the first day of the new year doing what I always do: gather inspiration and gluing it. PwowningFor me, less about setting goals and more about attention – an invitation to notice what I want to feel more. While I’m holding my collection of magazines and scrolled Pinterest, some images continuing: a bike ride through countryside in Europe. A library lowered by a garden. A Doftop Dinner, Golden-Hour Sid, with friends leaning around nearby and laughing. None of them taught a shiner version of myself. However, they offer a reminder of something that is more important: this year, I want to remember how to be a better friend.

The Fulfillment Hilum But Inspese: I’m Loud friendMany of them rooted and stood long. I have built a circle I am proud of friends living in the streets and friends living on the continents. But I started noticing the ways I started to show half steps. A response later, a reschedule here, a slow peak of small rituals that used our friendship. In a time when most of my energy went to work, my family, and self-growth, I would allow friendships Can be the thing that has happened if I have time left. And I don’t want to live that anymore.

How to become a better friend: a gentle wake call

So this year, I’m making a quiet, specific purpose: to be a better friend. Not by overhauling my life or packing my calendar – but by caring for the care of the existing. By being a person who remembers, who started, and who gathered together. A person who communicates feels easy and sacrifice again. It’s about how I get back my week around friendship, yes, but more importantly, it’s about what happens when you choose not just not just FOR your friends, but OTHERS them. Perfectly today. Open open. Everything in.

1. Ask yourself what friendship means to you today

In my 20s, friendship always looks like closeness. It lives opposite the hall, showing unknown to wine, which remains late talking to the kitchen floor. It does not require considerable planning – just presence, and a small serendipity. But somewhere, things are moved. We got jobs and colleagues, some of us had children, and many of us acted. (I, always.) Now, my best friends are scattered in time zones. And while something is beautiful about loving people all over the world, it also requires more intention. Drop-inced becomes scheduled calls. The casual hangout, the calendar invites. Friendship at this time of life asks for something intentionally.

That shift is depressed to me at the first same spontaneity is traded for the structure. But mine I see differently. The motivation of a friendship can always see someone, but you always choose to show them. This is the text that says “thinking of you” without expecting the answer. Sent a postcard from a place you know they love. It knows their mother’s name, their deadline, operation of their dog. If I wonder how to become a better friend, I think about attention. Friendship, I know, not a casual thing. This is something sacred. And like all sacred things, it is worth careful.

The motivation of a friendship can always see someone, but you always choose to show them.

2. Change your week to make space for connection

I used to think I was never hours. Between work, exercise, tasks, and to Daily war That’s what I’m going well, it seems like friendships need to self-afford the margins of my schedule. But when I looked at my week, I knew I had time – I never treated friendship as important. So I started planning for it how I plan for everything. I added it to my calendar. I made a little rhyms with a connection feeling helpless instead of too much.

One of the simplest changes is something I call “friendship on Friday.” It was a 10-minute window I blocked every Friday morning to send a voice voice, a meme, a little update I love. No pressure to meet or make plans – just a soft touchpoint to say, I think of you. I also began to treat the natural stop of my week – my dawn walks, my evening goes around – and the invitation connection at times. A quick call while folding the laundry. A text while waiting to boil water. Friendship doesn’t ask times – just asks for a purpose. And when I stopped treating it like a luxury and began treating such as shearing, something transferred.

3. Make rituals to make friendship feel sacred

It started with a little thing: a handwritten handwriting, sent on the first Sunday of each month. I light a candle, make a cup of tea, and sit with a set of postcards I have collected for years. Sometimes I write a perfect letter. Sometimes it is a passage or two, but these little actions have become less about the continuation of discussing and more than saying: You still live in my life. They rejected friendship with a practice less, more devotional.

Other rituals followed. A shared playlist with my best friend in London, which was roughly quiet when a song reminds us of a trip or a man we love before. One stood on Sunday dinner with friends living nearby, where we cooked the hosting and always cooking something nostalgic-pasta we made at College or summer. None of these is perfect or polished. But that’s probably the point. Friendship doesn’t ask for splendor. It asks for the presence, for rhythm, for care. These rituals don’t get a lot, but they make all feel slightly sacred.

Friendship doesn’t ask times – just asks for a purpose. And when I stopped treating it like a luxury and began treating such as shearing, something transferred.

4. Being pleasure to heal and retaliate

There is a certain type of illness from a neglected friendship. Sometimes it differs – the life busy, someone moved, a time being moved. But always, there’s something that doesn’t say beneath the bottom: a missed matter, a slow disappearance, a silence doesn’t know how to break. I’m on both sides. I dropped the ball and felt guilty about it. I was hurt and stayed silent. And for a long time, I allow the chances to explain the relationship instead of trying it.

But here I know: True friendship can hold more than good parts. This can be fixed. It can be added. And choose to heal (even clumsily) is a way of saying, You are still important to me. I started the conversation I used to avoid: I’m sorry I didn’t have the way I wanted. Or, I miss you, and I’m not sure how to do it. I also began to be more honest with my needs – not in a way that demanded, but in a way that invites care: Can I prompt for five minutes without fixing it? Or, I want to feel slightly supported today. Friendship does not improve perfection. It keeps retaliation. And if I stop trying to get it all “right” and began to believe my friends will meet me in a mess, everyone is weak.

What do I know how to become a better friend

Here is the simple truth: Friendship is less than doing more, and more about showing care. These little shifts have helped me to make space for people I love and deepen relationships that are most important.

  • Scheduling friendship such as self-care. Add it to your calendar, not as an assignment but as something nutritious.
  • Reach, even if it’s too long. The best time to say I miss you today.
  • Allow guilt. Friendships have times. Honor where you are, and keep in love.
  • Offer without watching points. Sometimes you give more. Sometimes you don’t. Allow that ebb and flow.
  • Don’t ignore a voice memo. Or a song. Or a postcard. Little things leaving an imprint.
  • Celebrate the victories of your friends. Strength! Be someone who blames the hardest.
  • Ask better questions. “How are you?” Always worth more than “what’s new?”

Friendship as a form of beauty

We spend a lot of time trying to improve ourselves – our careers, our bodies, our homes. But what if we put the same caring for our friendship? What if we make them feel important, beautiful, worthy effort?

Friendship is not something to optimize – it’s a matter of honor. In 2025, I choose to see my friends. Not day, but this weekend. Not perfect, but on purpose. And always have caution.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *