How to Build the Right Friendships Episode 294

How to Build the Right Friendships

Hey hey! Healthy, good friendships are so important in a mother’s life and their children’s lives. 

Today’s post is a special one, featuring the friendship chapter from my newest book, Remaining You While Raising Them: The Secret Art of Confident Motherhood.

The research kept showing that the right friendships were important in a mother’s life. Studies even showed that children in their developing years had better levels of child development if their moms had a good two or three friends for support systems and great socialization. So, this is not something we have the luxury to ignore. 

I wrote Remaining You While Raising Them to help women find freedom from the heavy weight of modern motherhood. I can’t give you a step-by-step plan to raise perfect children (an impossible dream!), but I can help you thrive as a happier, healthier mom, and friendship is a big part of that.

So, from my book, here’s how to build the right friendships. 

Green and Red Flags to Watch for in Friendships

In this chapter, I share about the first two mom friends I made when my family and I moved to Memphis. It was Rachel and Emily. Rachel and I met at the Chic-Fil-A Playland, and Emily and I met at the Memphis Zoo by the Gorilla exhibit. Rachel and I became great friends. I always felt better after hanging out with Rachel. She was kind, supportive, and honest. I even felt like I could let my guard down with her. She was the first person I told I wanted to help others on the internet! This was 24 years ago. I had no idea what that would look like, but it was the idea God had planned for me. 

Emily, on the other hand, was a different story. We did the normal things, play dates and trips to each other houses, but our relationship wasn’t the same as my relationship with Rachel. Although they would both tease me, Emily’s teasing always left me feeling bad about myself. After a few months, I found that, more often than not, I felt worse about myself and my life after hanging out with Emily. Looking back, I didn’t see the red flags from Emily, but as I’ve gotten older and have an understanding of toxic relationships, I can list them out. 

Red Flags

• They make you feel bad about yourself
• Put down other friends when they are around you
• Constantly criticize how you do things
• You are secretly relieved when plans fall through
• You feel exhausted and sad after you hang out with them 
• When you feel like you always have to shrink yourself when you’re around them. 

Green Flags 

• Encourage you 
• Support you 
• Not hurtful toward you 
• You feel better and energized after hanging out with them 
• You can be your authentic self

Knowing the red and green flags can help you build the right friendships. 

The Power of Friendship in Our Lives 

Fast forward twenty-four years, and my life looks much different. Four more boys arrived in our family, and the days of being a stay-at-home mom changed, too. Now, I run my company that helps women thrive all over the world through the internet. Unfortunately, as my company and family grew, my friendships took a backseat to family and work. 

However, here’s the thing: friendships make us happier than any other kind of relationship. How can it be, right? All the joy that kids bring, that deep affection we feel for our spouse and friends make us happier than all of that? Yes! Scientists have been tracking this happiness factor with hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s true. Here’s why it’s true. 

We choose our friends based on how we feel about them. Do they get us? Am I feeling known and understood? Do we click? We aren’t necessarily bound to our friends like we are in family relationships or job requirements. We just like them. And because of that, friendships are special. 

The power of friendship is that it provides the rich community we need in every season of our lives. And we especially need it in every season of motherhood. 

Having the right friendships is powerful! 

3 Habits for Healthy Friendships and Building the Right Friendships

1. Make peace with friend dating

As with dating, you always look for chemistry with a potential friend. You have to meet people, make small talk, and suddenly figure out if they want to hang out again. Sure, it’s awkward, but you have to make peace with the process. There is even an app to find friends; oddly enough, it’s owned by a dating app. How ever you find friends, it’s worth the awkward small talk when you find someone who gets you. 

2. Bundle friend time with everyday activities 

Friendship is voluntary; there aren’t systems that are going to hold us together. So, to have time with friends, we have to fit time into our already busy days. For example, my friend Laura has a friend, and they FaceTime every Tuesday evening while cooking dinner. 

I’ve bundled my friend time with work time by inviting a friend to start a business with me. You know which business I’m talking about, it’s Called Creatives, which I started with Lisa Whittle. And we like to bundle friend time, so we have our company planning time at Disney. We are bundling things we need to do, company planning weekend, with something that is super fun and friendship, Disney! So bundle things you have to do with a friend. 

3. Honor Your Priorities 

There’s a chemistry between good friends that defies explanations sometimes. For example, my friend Sarah and I are polar opposites about faith, politics, and most part of our parenting styles. We love each other and have the best time together, only because years ago, we decided to stop trying to convert each other to our way of thinking. 

When our kids were little, we occasionally laughed or rolled our eyes at each other’s rules that we disagreed with. One of the things that would come up was our three older kids are around the same age, but I went ahead and had two more. So, when all of the kids were together, the older ones often wanted to watch something that was age-appropriate for them but not for my two little ones. We agreed that when all the kids were together, they would watch something that was age-appropriate for all the kids. You can imagine the eye rolls from Sarah, but I stood my ground and reminded them that everyone can watch what they want in their own homes. 

My priority in friendships isn’t that they have to have the same belief in everything that I do. My priority in friendship is to have a friend with a positive outlook an emotionally healthy friend with a healthy mindset. 

These three habits will help build and keep the right friendships.

Listen now:

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Favorite quotes:

“Those little dreams that God plants in our hearts that seem impossible over time when we keep taking little steps with that power of 1%, we can reach our dreams.”

“Friendships make us happier than any other kind of relationship.” 

“Mom friendships benefit our kids. We’ve seen over and over that investing in our emotional health helps our children grow to be better adjusted, have healthier relationships, and be more successful in life.”

“Social media can be a valuable tool for helping us feel connected, but it also has the capacity to make us feel lonelier if we don’t use it intentionally to build connections.”

“Healthy, loving friendships are a gift from God. They are a key part of a happier life and a healthier mindset.” 

“Friendships that are flexible, fun, and fulfilling are one of the best gifts you can give to yourself and your children.”

Coaching this week: 

1. The Info Diet (43:25) 

Links to great things we discussed: 

• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
• Bless God – Brooke Ligertwood
• Remaining You While Raising Them

Order your copy of Remaining You While Raising Them here.

Hope you loved this episode! Be sure to subscribe in iTunes and slap some stars on a review! 🙂

xo,

Alli