Finding friends

Having friends means having something in common with other people; you give

and you hope to receive - a balance needs to be found, to be created.

Having powerful magnetism can certainly help you to attract sympathy and

influence opinions, but something more is needed to create a harmonious friendship.

To do this, you must adopt a certain attitude.

Firstly, you must banish any egocentricity that makes you impose your own

ways and views without respecting those of others. This is the very opposite of

friendship which requires an equal amount of give and take on both sides.

Everyone has a sense of their own value (which may be real or imagined but it’s

not up to us to say) and wants it to be recognised. You must be prepared to accept

that other people have different opinions to your own. Similarly don’t set yourself up

as a critic and be automatically disapproving without first trying to put yourself in the

other person’s place. Would you do things any better, worse, differently? What does

it matter! Respect their opinion. If you are a true friend, you won’t impose, won’t

judge.

The fact that you are someone’s friend doesn’t authorise you to give advice

when you haven’t been asked for it, to ask awkward questions or to commit

indiscretions. And you yourself must think twice before you share confidences that

you might regret later. If you do this, you will gain true, sincere and devoted friends

on whom you can rely and whom you’ll be glad to meet during good times and bad.

Remember that friendship is a balance! Make sure you (and others) don’t tip the

scales too far one way!

Also remember that all negative feelings weaken your magnetic power and can

end up destroying it irrevocably.

A few tips on conversing with friends: don’t try to hog the centre-stage all the

time, make your words simple, clear and precise, don’t drown your listeners with

superfluous or excessively personal details. Don’t turn the conversation onto a

subject that could hurt or embarrass someone, and finally, don’t subject others to a

recital of all your woes because you would do better to forget them rather than revive

them.