Friendships can have a major impact in your health and wellbeing. Friends can be there for you to celebrate the good times but also be a wonderful support when things get tough. Aside from preventing loneliness, friendships have many benefits, such as:

• Boosting your happiness and reduce your stress

• Enhancing your sense of belonging and purpose

• Helping you cope with traumas such as job loss, divorce, serious illnesses or the death of a loved one

• Encouraging you to change your unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise

It can sometimes be difficult to maintain a healthy friendship when most of us are busy running around with so many tasks to do on a daily basis. Take 5 minutes of your day today to celebrate “National Call a Friend Day” by seeing how your friends are doing. Letting your friends know you care about them and appreciate them can help strengthen your bond. It is just as important to be a good friend as it is to be surrounded by good, upbuilding friends. Here are some tips that can help you nurture your friendships:

• Be kind. Being kind is the core of a successful and healthy friendship. Think of your friendship as an emotional bank account. Every act of kindness will be a deposit into this account while criticism and negativity draws down the account.  

• Listen up. Get a conversation going and find out what’s going on in your friend’s life. Let them know that you are paying close attention with eye contact, body language, and an occasional brief comment. When your friend is going through a tough time, be empathetic but don’t give advice unless your friend asks for it.

• Open up. Being able to willingly reveal personal experiences about yourself can show that your friend holds a special place in your life and can deepen your connection.

• Show that you can be trusted. Being reliable, responsible and dependable are important in making a friendship stronger. By keeping your word and following through with commitments, it shows that you value them. And always make sure that when your friend shares personal, confidential information to keep it private in order to build trust.

• Make yourself available. Making an effort to staying in touch or checking in to see how they’ve been can help build your friendship stronger.

• Manage your nerves with mindfulness. Use mindfulness exercises to help you reshape your thinking instead of always imagining the worst of social situations. Each time you imagine the worst, pay attention to how often the embarrassing situations you’re afraid of actually take place. A lot of times these scenarios we play in our heads never happen. Even if embarrassing situations do happen, just remind yourself that these feelings will pass. The Mindfulness Toolkit can be a great resource for practical tips to help you be more mindful and present.