Reading the book “How to Make Friends with Anyone” by James Skinner, Royce Krueger and Mark Victor Hansen has inspired me a lot. In one sentence I can conclude that “Make friends with anybody is easy.” It is very practical and simple, but only because it is simple, most people often “forget” about it.
I personally don’t feel much challenges on making friends with anybody, unless there are resistance from the other party. I am a person with a flexible personality, I mainly can adjust with most of people’s character. But I admit that there are still some characters that are difficult to approach. I realize that everybody is unique. Some characters are fun and easy, some are difficult or even annoying. I have dealt with short tempered people. One of my friend is really irritating when he comes to anger. When his temper is up, everyone else is always at fault. Another friend of mine is so called a “funny” person. Even by saying “Good morning!” to him will be a fatal mistake if he is not in the good mood. Of course to deal with these people requires a lot of emotional sacrifices to maintain friendship with them, at least that what I feel, even though I always have a choice to just simply stay away from them.
The book itself describes practical methods of how to make friends with them such as: Smile when we meet friends, Ask for their help, Be happy to see them, Find commonalities not difference, Listen more to them and etc. From my friendship experiences, I truly believe that with those methods above, all people around the world can be my friend.
How many people know that smile can affect the feeling of other people who are in the bad mood? But nowadays, I see more people prefer to show their “long black face” when they meet with others. How many people truly realize that every single human has two ears and one mouth, so that they can listen more? But some people really prefer to talk more rather than being ears to others, even some of them talk without thinking first. Another common excuses to not making friends is that “Everyone seems so different!” Like I have mentioned above that everyone indeed is unique and different from each other, therefore we should think that with those differences, we should be able to “complete” with each other. Strength and weakness are combined with others’ strength and weakness. My strength will help other people weakness and other people’s strength will help my weakness… eventually we will become “perfected”. From there, find commonalities that can be the base of rapport building.
More and more people prefer to be individualistic, but I feel that it is going to be very scary if all people in this world think that social skill is no longer important, because human will lose their essence as a “social creature” where they will always need friends. Friendship is the root of peace.
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