5 inspiring friends

Everybody needs good friends to preserve resilience and energy. When I was born, on March 8. In 1957, a good friend and colleague of my father – Dr. Zeeman – wrote me a personal letter. When I was 30 my mother re-discovered this letter and gave it to me, it said the following: ‘welcome to this wonderful world. I whish that you, just like your father, become a great friend for many.’ Apparently he thought this to be one of the most important things in life, and I do agree with him. Besides, in regard to my father, he was right too. That my father had plenty of resilience and energy is not hard to see, knowing that he, as a widower, remarried when he was 61, got 3 more kids, and worked (with great enthusiasm) until his 75th.

The past 57 years, friendships have mainly been a great source of energy for me. Mainly. It is the realistic side of friendships. There are those friendships that give you energy, and those that cost you energy. Today we’ll take a brief look at 5 kinds of friendships that are all ‘energy-giving’. I like to call them the 5 inspiring friends…

 

1. The relaxed friend:

These are friends with whom you like to talk about the big and small things in life. You experience an unconditional ‘yes’ towards you – as a person. Whenever you meet such a friend, you start feeling relaxed, you don’t feel like you have to do something at the moment. You make friends like these by being such a friend yourself, by being relaxed, by making the others feel like they can be themselves, by making them feel at ease.

2. The motivating friend:

These friends point us towards our skills and talents. At the same time they are challenging us to work with our abilities. To develop ourselves. It seems they take great joy in catching us doing something unique or doing something uniquely good. For parents this is a rather normal attitude (towards their children). But it is quite important to have such friends outside the family as well.

3. The feedback friend:

They invest in our growth by giving clear and honest feedback. It’s not about judgement, but about stimulating us to develop ourselves further. These are friends that are not afraid to speak frankly, friends that we need in order to stay healthy and resilient.

4. The partner friend:

These are friends that share (some of) our passions. Friends that help pulling the cart. Friends with whom you build things, with whom you go trough thick and thin. They add to our enthusiasm for our passions, and contribute to a great extend to who we are and what we do. For me some of these friends are my colleagues at xpand that have been building this company together with me for so many years. Obviously Sylvia is also one of these friends. She has been at my side for 40 years. Together we have taken on many, many adventures and challenges.

5. De mentor friend:

Gordon Macdonnald calls them the ‘Very Resourcefull People’. They also add to our enthusiasm for our passions. They encourage and motivate us to grow as a human, as well as in our professional lives. They support us in good and in bad times. When I look back on my life so far, I am incredibly grateful to have had such mentor-friends during all periods of my life. In many cases they have supported me to make the right choices. A question that many people ask me is: ‘how does one gain such friends?’ Well, it is my impression that you don’t just gain them by feeling entitled to gain such friends. One finds mentors by searching for them, by being openhearted, by being frank about the things you seek to learn, the things you seek guidance for, etcetera.

Where to start? Start with realizing what friends you already have. Write their names down. And think about the people that you would really like to include to one of these groups of friends. So, write down:

- a: the people that already are a friend – as mentioned above

- b: the people that you would like to gain as such a friend

I wish you luck and inspiration, for discovering ‘inspiring friends’.

Paul Donders