How can friends affect your life

Almost everyone knows that their friends can affect their life in a way or another but what most people don't know is that this effect is far more powerful than they can imagine.

Your friends don't just influence your decisions but they can alter your view of the world, change your perception and turn you into a different person than you really are!!

In this article i am going to tell you how can friends affect your life and how powerful is their influence.

The ways your friends affect your life

• They change your beliefs about things: Beliefs can be changed if they were constantly challenged and if new beliefs were constantly repeated. Lots of my friends had a pessimistic view of the job market before they even had the chance to interact with it. This pessimistic view came from the continues programming they received from their friends in the form of suggestions that are repeated over and over such as "its extremely hard to find a job these days"
• They affect your self confidence: Friends Alter each others perception, if the majority of a group thinks that a person is arrogant or snobbish then this belief will be transferred to the whole group and since believing that someone is treating you in a bad way could be understood as a sign that shows that you are not that worthy such a belief might affect a person's self confidence badly. In the Solid Self confidence program i explained how this shared perception can lower the self confidence of a whole group including you if you were one of them
• Your friends affect your behavior: An experiment has shown that a monkey that never feared snakes started to fear them when it saw the anxious response of a monkey that feared snakes when being introduced to them!! This means that watching someone who is feeling afraid, anxious or helpless could teach you how to be like him!! (See how fears are learned)
• Your friends can infect you with bad emotions: Why do you think you experience different emotions while watching a movie? Simply because the facial expressions of actors transfers to you their emotional states and the same happens with your friends. Your sad friend might make you feel sad and your depressed friend can let you become depressed on the long term (see How emotions affect communications)

So how to prevent your friends from affecting you?

Don't worry you don't have to change your friends but all what you must do is to become conscious of the facts that were mentioned in this article and to filter everything that you hear or see.

Don't accept your friend's view of the world, their beliefs or their opinion without proper realistic filtration. That would be enough to protect you.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.

The Solid confidence program was launched by 2knowmyself.com; the program will either help you become more confident or give you your money back.

Want to know more?

How your friends influence you

How to become popular among friends

How peer pressure affects teenagers