Friends aren't found in phonebooks.

It can be quite interesting to actually take a friendship you have and to ask questions about it. Dig deep inside and ask yourself questions about any friendships you have, and you might be surprised to find out some rather interesting stuff.

We often hear of people speaking of 'true friends' and 'hang-out buddies', and it would seem quite obvious if anyone asked you to categorize all your friends accordingly. Of course, there would be some friends who can't fit within either categories, either because they are somewhere in between, or somehow, they might not even belong to those two. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Just give that a shot for now. Sit down for 1 minute, write down as many names as you can think of. I'm pretty sure that most people can at least come up with 20-odd names, or even a whole hundred. (Although I don't think you can really write all hundred names in a minute.)

Now that you have the entire list, I would presume that these names should, generally speaking, be 'ranked' according to how close you might be, assuming that most people recall close friends first. Now, give yourself another minute or so, and rate your closeness to these people, on a scale of 1 to 10. A score of 10 would be someone you can call or talk to about any problem you might have at any point in time, and also should reflect how open you can be towards the person when relating problems.

Once you are done, take a look at the list you have, and count the number of friends you have given a score of between 8-10, and compare against the number of friends you have given a lower score. I think it's rather self-explanatory from now on as to what kind of friends you have in your life.

Next, we'll try to take this a step further, and try to give scores by putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Ask yourself how likely is it that the person is willing to share his/her problems with you and be open about issues in his/her life. If you can confidently give a high score to that as well, then it should be safe to say that you really do have a good friend.

It is good to be sociable and to make tonnes of friends. But ask yourself, what is the point of having a hundred friends when none of them can help you when you are in need? Not to sound too pragmatic or anything, but I believe that everyone should at least strive to have a handful of real good friends who you can share problems with. Yes, the 'bottling up your feelings' thing really isn't healthy at all, and you should know the risk of having just one good friend to talk to: While you are sharing your problem, Murphy gets into the picture and your friend's mobile battery goes flat. Beep.

However, bear in mind that there is also a difference between making close friends and complaining to anyone you see about everything in your life. No one enjoys listening to problems all day, simply because they themselves have their share of problems. Going too far off with this practice would simply land you with a blank paper after 10 minutes in the earlier exercise.

It is easy to have a friend's number stored in your phone book, or even in your mind. But it really isn't as easy as you might think to keep a healthy friendship.

Friends aren't found in phonebooks.