Are Your Friends a Good Influence?

Friendships can benefit you in lifting your self-esteem, encouraging you to live healthier, or even just elevating the quality of your life. Your friends should lift you up and help you to be the best person you can be. Here are a few tips on deciding whether or not your friends are a good influence.

You Feel Good After Spending Time With Them

One way to determine if your friends are having a positive effect on you is to gauge your mood after you've been with them. Do you leave feeling energized and happy? If so, chances are your friends are a good influence on your mind and body.

By contrast, if you spend an entire day with your friends and feel out-of-sorts or guilty afterward, your pals may not be as positive as they could be. Your friends don't necessarily need to encourage you to run marathons or help you brainstorm ideas for the next great American novel, but they do need to give you an all-around good feeling.

Negative Behavior That Can Bring You Down

When deciding whether or not your friends are a good influence, it's important to look at the overall big picture. Your friends don't need to be perfect (because none of us are), but they should encourage you. A friend who is a negative influence may want you to:

• Gossip
• Gamble or spend money you don't have
• Make choices that will hurt you or your family.
• Engage in illegal activities
• Shun your other friends

For example, your pals should encourage a healthy lifestyle (since it's something we all should adhere to), but the reality is that you might just splurge on your diet once in a while or skip your exercise class in favor of a movie. It's not the day-to-day activities you look at when determining if someone is good for you. Rather, it's the overall effect someone has on your life.

Finding More Positive Friends

Before you look for new friends, take a look at your friend groups to see if there is perhaps one person that encourages the rest of you to be negative. If that's the case, stand up to them by doing things like refusing to gossip, bowing out of activities that are dangerous or illegal, and making better choices despite what your friends might encourage you otherwise.

When you do this, pay close attention to see if someone else in the group is influenced by your behavior. Your change may inspire others in the group to resist the negativity as well. 

If you do need to find new friends, take it slow and be choosy about who you spend your time with. If you are desperate for friends, you'll probably end up with more of the negative types of friends you just left behind. Instead, hold out for positive friends who will encourage you to be yourself. Figure out the things you like to do, and build friendships around those goals and activities. You'll naturally meet people through hobbies and events you enjoy, and the bonus is that your new friends will probably like doing them as well.

Standing Up to Negative Friends

Sometimes when you leave negative friends behind, they turn the tables and make it your problem. They might hold parties and not invite you, call you up to complain that you're never around, or even spread gossip or lies about you. Be strong with your commitment to living a fuller life that includes more positive friends.​