BEING LIKEABLE, HAVING FRIENDS AND KNOWING THE TRUTH
By
Bill Cottringer








I think we can make achieving success and happiness in life much more complicated than it needs to be. A simple, enjoyable life can involve three parts: Work, rest (including sleep and eating) and relationships (including recreation). When we get out of balance in any of these areas, we have problems. They each need our equal time and attention.

All three parts of this simple triad are critical for happiness, success and contentment in our lives. With work, we are happiest and most successful when we find a job that: (a) suits most of our important personal needs (b) challenges us to apply our skills in providing a service or product to help others, and (c) provides real purpose, significant meaning and enjoyable rewards. With sleep, we should buy the best bed to rest in comfortably and develop relaxing hobbies to relieve the stress of modern day living.

Relationships are a little more complicated. From my training and experience, successful relationships also involve three parts: Becoming likeable, making friends, and learning the truth. Each of these are discussed briefly below:

BECOMING LIKEABLE

A few of us are lucky enough to born likeable without having to change much of anything, but the rest of us have to work hard at developing this likeability characteristic throughout our lives from childhood to school to work to retirement. Research clearly links a person’s likeability with success in anything. My own earlier research identified the important characteristics people display when they are perceived as being either likeable or unlikeable by others.

The difference between being likeable or unlikeable is very clear. Likeable people show the following behaviors. They are perceived as being real, honest, positive, physically appealing, humorous, empathetic, polite, spontaneous, agreeable and good listeners. On the other hand unlikeable people demonstrate just the opposite behaviors. They are perceived by others as being phony, dishonest, negative, physically unappealing, over-serious, insensitive, rude, contrived, disagreeable, and poor listeners.

MAKING FRIENDS

The best friendships seem to be developed with two people who are attracted to each other, probably because they both perceive each other as being likeable and capable of accepting the whole package without harsh judgment. And the main way we build such friendships is to convey our likeability with likeable communication.

Likeable communication is supportive in nature, and this encourages open communication whereas unlikeable communication creates defensiveness which usually shuts down communication. A more supportive tone of communication generally occurs when we convey the desirable qualities of equality, honesty, sensitivity, spontaneity, freedom, acceptance, positivism and inclusion. Defensive communication is brought on when we convey undesirable things such as superiority, dishonesty, insensitivity, strategy, control, judgment, negativity and exclusion.

LEARNING TRUTH

We can never really be happy or successful until we know the truth of something. All our lives are about finding out this truth. Being likeable and making friends is the best way to learn the truth. It is the intimate, urgent and meaningful conversations that occur between friends that uncovers the truth of things. This is when we can just be quiet and hear it without becoming defensive or feeling that we are being judged or criticized. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable because we trust the other person and feel safe. This is the way of truth.

The bottom line to life is that we have two basic needs: (a) to be accepted and loved unconditionally as we are, with all our faults, foibles and weirdness, and (b) to be gently encouraged to keep on learning, growing and improving in unfolding our magnificent potential that has no bounds. Friends speak these two voices of life in the right order and frequency—lots of acceptance and unconditional love and small doses of the other when the timing is right.

Life can be as simple as we make it and a simple life can bring great joy, success and satisfaction. Work and play hard, sleep well, relax a little, and become likeable, make friends and learn the truth in relationships. This is much all easier done than said. And it really doesn’t make much sense living any other way, at least for me and my friends. It is working out quite well and there have certainly been years past where it didn’t. Try this approach, I think you will like it!

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security, Business Success Coach, Sport Psychologist, Writer and Photographer from Issaquah, WA. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don’t. Bill can be reached with questions and comments at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net