Recently I spoke at Forward Bank’s EPIC Event: Engage – Play – Inspire – Connect. One of the concepts I shared is that cohesiveness provides a collective sense of identity. The eight components of cohesiveness include shared or compatible goals, progress toward these goals, shared norms, lack of perceived threat between members, interdependence of members, threat from outside the team, shared team experiences, and mutual perceived attractiveness and friendship.
Sharing our predicaments with a friend can relieve our stress, increase our strengths, and can help us create innovative solutions for life’s inevitable ups and downs. I have said for years, make sure you spend time with friends that are supporting you, rather than distorting you. Choosing the right companions is the key. Some researchers claim one benefit is that friends make us sharper.
Research shows that a 10-minute chat on a social topic can boost executive function, this type of mental agility can help us solve problems.
It is also important to have friends around us who support us when we take stress-filled risks. Friends reduce our body’s stress response. Studies have shown that when people have a negative experience while one of their friends is present, not only do they feel better about themselves afterwards, but they also had lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, during the stressful situation, than those people who did not have a friend present.
We can tolerate so much more stress in life when the right people are there to let us know that we are not alone, in good times and bad. Make friendship a priority and schedule time together. Never take friendship for granted. Join a variety of groups that match your interests. Have different friends for different activities. Choose the best the best people to work alongside, the best people to enjoy social activities, and the best people share the same home.
