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OUR FRIENDS ARE WHO WE ARE

OUR FRIENDS ARE WHO WE ARE

Once a friend approached me in my room and told me that she wished she could be able to discover her real self. Being a specialist in that area, the personality tests like Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ) clicked my head, and without faltering, I told her about the EPQ which consists of a set questions with yes or no answers with score sheet which shows ones level of extroversion/introversion, neuroticism/ Stability, Psychotism/Socialization. The EPQ has a chart showing four temperaments in which one may be categorized according to the characteristics, and they include; Melancholic, Choleric, Phlegmatic and Sanguine.

However, my friend felt that these tests only tell who one is on paper and most of the time they make one inclined to behaving in a stated way according to the personality type but what she really wanted was to see a mirror of herself and how she behaves. Thereby, l told her that if she really wanted to know who she is, she should look at her inner circle of friends and would get to know it all. Everyone in my room who l didn’t think were paying any keen attention to our discussion started booing me down. Noticing an argument was about to ensue, l knew it was time to defend my statement…and…here goes…

“I know you can all remember this saying that was told to us by adults since childhood- ‘show me your friends and l will tell you who you are,’ or as my mother said in our local dialect,’Tang’na osiepni kasto abonyisi ng’ama in.’Let’s take a moment and reflect on how we formed our positive friendships.Every person who transmutes to become part of our inner circles of friends is always cherry-picked in our minds, we can all avouch to thoughts like, we like the same stuff, l like the way he thinks, we have many things in common, he/she is as intelligent as l am we can make a great team anytime, he/she is great to hang around with…Etc. just to mention but a few. 

Hence, it’s by no surprise that friendships are formed from those we interact with.
Anais Nin (Author) says that, ‘Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ’To further explain Anais point, we see that friends influence us in more ways than you realize. They tend to determine our sense of self and the direction of our lives as more than often do we emulate them and make decisions like they do. Friends also tend to give one vital skills, for instance, with boys on how to ‘katia’ a girl, so one uses the methods the friend/(s) use. Friends help one define their priorities, since it’s a fact that people tend to pick friends who are similar to them, that means  their priorities with their friends will be similar.

In conclusion, it doesn’t mean that we share all the qualities with all our friends but how we carry ourselves is because of the friends we have and as Jim Rohn(author, entrepreneur) says, ‘You are the average of five people you spend the most time with. ‘And as I say, ‘be good always and bad company will avoid you.”







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