I’m guiding myself to become a better version of who I am.

But there are times where being friendly isn’t always the first thing I do with everyone.

Of course, I am also like most humans - when find out that we have a similar interest with another (or things to resonate) with new people, I get better - and exciting to know more about what is coming up. The topic that we’re talking about.

"But what if you don't have anything to talk about?"

This comes up in my mind at certain times. Nothing is there to converse for real good and when contradictions between new parties hits up, you don’t want to be in an argument with a stranger.

So you became quiet. You don’t know what to say. And the friendliness trait has become something that’s so near, yet so far to you.

Prior that you still want to become a friendly plant pot to reading this.

I believe being friendly is a trait that you as a human would want to learn. Not because that you want to solely fit in to society, but it is who you are when you originally came into this world.

A human at its core care about its originality, relationship and well being because it’s all part of him or herself.

Our very first ancestors live in their era of society by teaming up with other people to make something great. They put in work to survive, fight to protect their own boundaries of homeland by not doing this alone.

They knew they had to work together in their circles, to provide better safety and stability.

You are no different to them in this evolution. (with much more possibilities)

You continue in this era to connect with the like minded ones. The people that you would like to work with, or make friends to start a spaceship.

Everybody works toward a purpose no matter what, and you realize that you have one too.

You cannot deny that there is fun when you found the right people to work with. With the same values or purpose, you will be more than happy to work with them.

But sometimes, just like your ancestors who needs to protect themselves, you have boundaries to be taken care of.

• You don’t want to be in an argument
• No dealing with life dramas
• Anything with negativity in disguise

You just want to be free of those problems when it’s just like another weekly entertainment to others in life.

And you lose touch to what originally comes easy to you.

The dearly reminder that you can be a friendly person.

To do something that makes you feel happy when interacting with others.

You just need to know what makes it easy to let that happen again.

Being friendly isn’t always the easiest thing to be growing up in this era, where our phone is literally our friend with others living in that entity.

Without learning the main principles, we easily forget how to treat friends and family in a good way.

Or even start a conservation with someone.

This guide is to help you to have a good relationship with people (without sacrificing your well being).

Tips I Learnt to Maintain a Good Relationship with Others

1. Remember the Good in Them.

If you want a positive outcome, all you do is remain a positivity lifestyle and routine that allows you to do this.

It’s the same when you encounter with people.

If you want a positive interaction with other, you remember the good side they provided to you with the tiny slightest thing they do.

A smile that they gave you when first met, is probably what made you remember them.

This gives you room to appreciate who they likely are or have been for you.

I’m not saying that you cannot have a bad image towards anyone who doesn’t respect you and blindly follow. It’s useful to learn staying away from the ones who doesn’t care about anyone’s well being on this planet.

But 90% of the time you can free yourself from holding grudges and cultivate a positivity in yourself by just remembering the good that someone has did for you.

Even though that might have been happened n years ago.

I want you to know that making positivity as a habit is as important as taking care of your well being.

The opposite could bring you and the people around to an endless bad loop hole.

• it makes you sad for no reason
• you thought that becoming alone is your forever situation
• not much nice thing can happen to you

And if those happen it is not because that you are unlucky.

It’s because you didn’t discover that positivity is a helpful skill to make you turn things upside.

We’ll talk about how your energy can impact your relationship with others next.

2. Don’t Give into Bad Reactions and Feelings Towards A Small Thing.

We live in a world to have our mind of thought send out and read by millions of others without barriers.

A status that you want to post through IG stories.

Your friends can instantly know what happens to you today.

That sounds like a good start to connect with friends and close ones. But in another way, it also trained us to become more reactive towards an issue, when the matter isn’t what we should be paying attention to in life.

You have goals you want to achieve or to become the ideal self you want to see but instead:

We become humans that:

• shout to each other
• can’t communicate well
• don’t know how to make bad feelings go away

Though understanding that humans need time to process their own emotional tunnels,

What you can do to focus on is:

• knowing thyself (your health, well being, current mental state)
• what is your flow (working towards your goal leading to self-fulfillment)

This trains you to spend time on what you can improve in, instead of thinking heavily about the bad news you see seconds ago, AND that you can’t help out with (but has affected your mind negatively).

You are doing this not to only make yourself a mentally healthy person,

But ultimately create a better environment and space for you to treat others well.

In turn you get to be a more friendly version of yourself when you bump into someone.

That happens when you:

• keep spreading the good and positivity
• stay away from the feelings that make you be in a turmoil

My take is to learn letting go of the bad reactions and not give into it.

This unexpectedly saves you time and energy (if you used to be a low-key crybaby like me).

When you do this, you no longer hold on to many bad reactions outside of your life. And now have know that it’s bad for your health (or to grow as a human).

You become more easy to mingle around with others and to be worked with. The feelings are still there to allow you to express anytime, but you learn to take hold more of your emotional state - to yourself.

And later able to return a good state to others. That’s a win-win situation for you, to know where to give into energy while a bad reaction thing pops up.

People do love to be positive - but sometimes they might not know that it’s important to find ways to cultivate it more EASILY in life.

So that what you deem is happiness comes effortlessly.

You don’t search for happiness, you surround yourself with the positive and good things easily come to you. This applies to your work, mind or any beliefs you have.

Notice that negativity is spread easily and they can become uncontrollable. It’s like the bad news you see on social media - it spreads like a wildfire. The positive posts are only there to celebrate for that moment, and after a short hooray they’re gone quickly.

Because apparently it’s easier for human to only see the flaws in other humans and stuff, we didn’t properly learn to appreciate each other anymore.

One thing we can do is to stop giving into the bad reactions and start learning what is good to our mind, just like reading this to become the friendlier version you want to be.

3. Meditate and Take Rest.

Making time to rest has made me realized our brains needs it to refresh. It give us endless ideas and imagination to see the world as a beautiful place.

When you’re at sleep, bored or doing nothing, your brain is technically resting but actually still working for you. Just in another special way.

It is then your ideas flow and solutions may come up under this state. Your calm, imaginative stories and adventures can come up during these dream state - called flow. And make you wonder what world were you in, in that last dream.

I recommend having a dream journal so you record what happened in these resting phases - as its interesting to see how these dream reality are close to - what inspiration does the world wants to bring you.

Whether that’s a big duck or flying coconut trees that came to your dreams time to time.

So in case you always think sleeping or resting does you no progress or movement, its actually surprising when you’re resting - human evolution doesn’t stop there.

Doing meditation and taking shifts of rest helps you take time to know about yourself. This is the time where you vision your smallest dreams and big goals.

• the ideal version of you
• where do you want to be in few years
• are you happy with where you are

You let yourself be in a happy state when you fall into sleep.

Resting allows you to do bored stuff, like really just go to sleep and breathe deeply. You’re not thinking deeply but when you have rest, but it (1) rewards you physically by regaining energy, (2) get you mentally prepared for anything you are scared of - on autopilot.

You zoom out on your problems as a mechanism when you go to sleep. When you make meditation practice in your daily activities. Anything you love to do can put you into these flow state and be a meditation time for you personally.

What can meditation be like:

• start properly breathing freely
• making some art
• watching a movie
• dancing to a song
• listen to someone
• cooking a meal
• reading a book
• writing your day
• sleeping, bored & doing nothing

I encourage you to try out anything that can lean into your passion and that’s when you can find out what happiness meant to you.

Then you allow yourself to flow ideas doing these meaningful activities and discover that friendliness you have in you.

Everyone wants to be a nice person.

But not all humans define nice the same way.

So some think that being friendly isn’t a trait that live on them.

Not what to be - if they can’t look into someone’s eye since a long time ago.

Not something to practice about or being discovered.

And you are here to find out the answer. On what does friendliness meant to you, not other people.

It’s your passion. It’s these meaningful activities you called hobby that links you to happiness pit stops and you find out who you are.

Then you get to know what that little kid in you feels like to be happy.

And learn about your friendly side that is peeled by discovering what you like.

You share those happy feelings with your friends, family and snowball those memories by leaning into what you love to do.

Take shifts to rest during your day

It’s sleeping that does these job to help you reduce any irritation feelings on issues and problems. (if you haven’t try it out).

Simple breathing exercise also help you to have peace of mind when you stop caring about anything and just focus on it. It releases your stress and worries by breathing in and out deeply. When you feel good, many problems can be freed away and becoming that friendly girl or boy actually felt like something you naturally does.

This is telling from my experience and I genuinely think it’s attainable for you to become a better person by simply starting to take care of yourself.

It’s something we overlook in this world, yet a simple foundation that we live on.

4. Learn to Love Yourself and The World

Everyone comes into this world as a unique person as far as we grow into different personalities, throughout different experiences and our backgrounds.

We change as we get aged. Not just the looks but our mind to try figure out everything.

It feels like there’s no value to hold on to, even if it’s like a good time to become the friendly person you always wanted to be treated like.

Though nobody can give the perfect advice to ask you how to live life (because you are meant to figure it out by living it out your own).

Nor can you get an exact guideline to become the friendly human.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything - to begin fulfilling part of who you want to be starting from now.

You’ll still want to:

• to do something for others
• have a passion or interest
• you do what you love
• be happy that you are progressing in life

Learning to love yourself is the source to provide love to others.

When you put time to learn about who you are and nurture yourself, then you’ll feel easier to give it to others.

It’s a two-way street but something we don’t always hold accountable when we are only searching for outside validations and don’t see what we can do starting from ourselves.

Do you take care of yourself?

• have a good routine
• sleep early
• groom yourself, stay clean
• eat healthily
• do exercise
• get outside to have some sunlight

You improve yourself too when practice these new habits, not just when you learn a skill to improve yourself.

Just like being friendly, there’s not much technical aspects or skills to follow to shape your own charisma.

But taking care of yourself help you to do it better.

Like the plant pot you learn to take care of, then you can start treating other plant pot in the same way. It does take practice to know what kind of things we like and what others resonate too.

Even if it doesn’t, we continue to create our own kind of positivity that string together to make the world a better place.

A lot of these habits can help you to stay positive easily and you start turning into a friendly plant pot.

Notice it happened not by having lots of comfort when you nurture.

Your discipline puts in the work to get you happy and you enjoy more freedom when keeping a consistent routine in life. That’s one of the first step to start loving yourself.

If you want to know what kind of person you are, recall the last time you treated a close ones, or someone like a waiter. Is it a nice experience or no, you find out more about you in those encounters.

But we are doing this not just that we want it to be ALL US. It’s too bored when you are loving yourself but not giving it to the world.

It’s bored because you realize your capabilities weren’t only that. That you can give something valuable to others.

That’s how the word friendliness is somehow put into the world.

Humans learn that showing friendliness is a kind of love they put out for others, reflecting it back to the world. They started treating others with compassion and love the way of who they are.

By doing so, everything that they do or make can potentially be something that benefits others life, giving meaning to their own lives.

When you love yourself, you gather the positivity, energy and strength enough for you to work out with challenges in life.

You start realizing that practicing to love yourself is the main idea to improve in any aspects you want in life, including to obtain happiness, money, inner strength and abilities.

There’s no more competition to make with others when you are treating yourself great.

Because you already have the love filled in you. You start knowing you are able to give.

Whether that’s contributing to the society or starting out a conversation in that new party.

You’ll find it easier to make it through by giving within your capabilities but not forgetting who you want to be.

That’s why learning to love yourself and the people surrounding you can make you feel the same way, (and you replicate that with an authenticity to make the friendly version of you happening).

5. Life lesson either make you positive, or negative.

If you happened to find that there is no purpose in you to achieve at the moment - that you are just simply a rock floating on this space.

This is where you are at best position to zoom out on all situations, including solving problems in your life.

When you zoom out on your life problems, do you realize that there are these life lessons given to you?

No matter how you decide to face these situations,

These life lessons can only either make you more positive or negative, which you develop into a stronger person depending on experiences of your own.

It’s important to make sure that we are not falling into the black hole when we try our best to live on Earth.

Even without a purpose of achieving anything.

Your well being gave you a peace of mind to think about having no purpose.

And so it deserves something better for you to start treating your body, mind and soul with care.

Not the comfort kind of care, but some principles you follow to let yourself grow in different aspects.

The principles to grow:

• stop delaying your own happiness
• turn self doubts into actions
• start the thing that makes you create and evolve over time
• let yourself to play the long game (with the thing you care about)

To have a positive mindset is what you can do best to develop yourself in these modern days.

You don’t owe anyone to become that friendly person you see outside,

But you need to learn what makes you happy if that includes seeing your friends and family having a good time too.

Being the person that can develop their own happiness and treat people with kindness is a great way to continue this practice naturally as a human being. You then own a collective of experiences, life lessons that can taught you what does it meant by your personality.

It’s a new landscape you tackle on each day and the reason why you want to be friendly the other day you meet up with this old friend.

The old gang circles that make you comfortably alive.

Friends can taught you a lot. They let you learn to treat strangers with care - when you start observing how everybody socialize with their own quirks, awkward conversations and making funny moments.

Then you develop into your own fun side of friendliness to others. That’s how you become a friendly plant pot, to stay still while having fun as a human.

It’s like you’re a born a woodworker waiting to discover what kind of craftwork and skills you can present to the table. You might not know what great work is there, but it takes time to hone these skills by years to carve a beautiful statue.

You develop yourself in these life lessons. When you give it a positive outlook, life rewards you a good season waiting to be discovered. This is how you blessed yourself with lots of freedom for what you want to do or to become.

So learn to stop caring too much, but to be who you are authentically. There is still room to develop and all that good stuff to inspire people, one another.

There is still a friendly version of you waiting to be recalled, or an ideal version of who you can be in this world.

In no time, me and you each make a difference to become the friendly plant pot we want to be.

That’s all for you to learn while reading this friendly human guide.

We’ll talk another time soon.

- Zenn