Friends. What good are they? Well, friends can be much more valuable than you think! Think about some of the sayings about friends. “You are the company you keep”. “To learn more about you all I need to do is look at who your friends are”. And, “Birds of a feather flock together”. Do these sound familiar? Friends can be so important that they affect our physical, emotional, and spiritual health and more so than our biological family. Some studies show that people who have strong social ties to friends have a 50% better chance of surviving into old age. But, do we need 10 good friends? No. The key is to actually have only a handful of very close friends with whom we have very strong connections.
Friends and Living Longer
If you want to live a longer and healthier life, surround yourself with 2 or maybe 3 very close friends. Studies show that friends have a greater influence on how we age and how long we live, even more than our children and other relatives. People with strong social ties also have an advantage when it comes to living longer and happier lives. Regardless of other factors such as age, sex and health status, people with good relationships in their lives tend to live longer and survive into older ages like 85 and beyond.
Some research indicates that having few to no friends is extremely unhealthy and can lead to many poor outcomes like loneliness, depression, illness, and suicide. The health risk of having few to no friends is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being obese and not exercising. These all can decrease one’s lifespan. I must make a point here about the word “friends”. Having real, solid and healthy relationships with people you interact with is what I mean by friends. They are not someone you Tweet every now and then or some distant person you barely know on Facebook. There is a huge difference in terms of quality in these relationships.
Stop right now and think about the friends you have in your life. List them out on a piece of paper. Would those same people list you as a friend? It has been estimated that only 50% of your friends will think of you as a close friend. Don’t be bummed out. There are many reasons why this would occur. We all define “friend” differently, and especially “close” friend. Perhaps they are not as close as we think. IN addition, there are people in our lives with whom we are “friendly”, but not truly friends.
The Bottom Line on Friendship and Longevity
The bottom line is we don’t need a large number of friends to live a long and healthy life. This isn’t a numbers game. The key is really to have a handful of good people in our lives to make a difference. And now, let’s get a little deeper. You have 3 or 4 close friends and what matters most is the relationship among these people. Close, real, genuine, honest, supportive relationships is what really matters. Nurture your best relationships. Think about what you can do for them. How can you make those people happier? What kind of value can you provide in their lives? By enriching their lives, you better your own.
(NOTE: Interested in learning more about Employee Wellness? Checkout my Employee Wellness CEUs on CEU Academy and try a FREE CEU today!)
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