that’s: Them.
I’m: Me.
Don’t backstab, or hurt me and so we will be…
As long as you can remain a good friend to me and you can water your flower but be okay with my literal blossoming in life without your getting jealous or spiteful and eventually backstabbing me, then our spiritual garden of friendship is fortified and watered—which brings me back to the point of this blog and explaining all aforementioned as, therein lies the problem (read slowly and carefully):
We think that who we choose as friends and for whatever reasons we chose them makes them our friend or means that we are friends but it’s quite the opposite.
How that friend feels as:
- compared to you
- equal to you
- below
or even
- above you
…is how a person considers YOU to be their “friend” (or not)…
As well, that being the case, the interpersonal inventory that you need to stay up on is not necessarily whether or not your friends are expendable because you’re on your grind now, and such and such knows your name, because (according to this new study) should that be your case; (all damning due to social networks and the politics of it) you would be in the group of participants who considered their “friends” being those who benefit their social climb (versus the latter).
So what can you do about it? It’s simple.
Know this:
While it’s okay to be “ambitious” and have ambitious ‘friends,’ be cautious of the ones that will do anything for something, because in the bigger scheme of things, unless you’re instrumental in their climb, you are nothing to them. They don’t see the value to them or individual and gem in you-even to them as just a friend-a real friend. So don’t hold in high regard, categorize or value those types of people. That simple.
SIDEBAR: Understand that while the same is true in relationships via social media, the study’s use of word “social networks” existed even before social media’s “social networks” and that is the “social network” they are speaking of in this study’s findings.
Check out the story brought to you by our sister site via ScienceDaily.com and Mental Floss.com
Artists in video bottom atop OSF big screen: WHODINI / “Friends”
