Eric Barker is back with another episode, offering us psychological insight and analytics into friendship. He summarizes some fascinating research, including the work by Robin Dunbar, making his entire article well worth a visit. That said, here are Barker’s take-aways on how to make and sustain emotionally intelligent friendships:
- Stay in touch: Friendship is not an arena where you want to play hard to get. What are you, a carnival prize?
- Gratitude: If we’re more kind to strangers than to friends, we are definitely doing something wrong.
- Quality > Quantity: Share emotional experiences. That’s the secret to those friendships where you can just pick up where you left off.
- Budget appropriately: Time is limited. Allocate it wisely. And this is yet another reason to ditch the jerks in your life.
- How to party: Eat. Laugh. Reminisce. Avoid small talk. The more the merrier. (And maybe a bit of booze.)
- Make your best friend better: You influence each other more than you know. Make yourself better and help make them better, because, in the end, those two are the same thing.
