New Book Shows The
Importance Of Friendships & How To Make Friends
– Leading To A Better Job, Life &
Community!
![The Friendship Key to Lasting Peace, United Communities,Strong Relationships, Equality, and a Better Job by [Sedhoff, Winfried]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41nnD2wC0YL.jpg)
Does
the path to having a better job, stronger relationships, and even world peace
come down to one thing that we each have control of ? The answer according to Dr. Winfried
Sedhoff’s new book, The Friendship
Key, is yes. We simply
need to have more friends, deeper friendships, and to embrace our
communities.
“Friendship
empowers us to achieve meaning and purpose in our lives, and by connecting with
others we can ultimately change the world around us,” says Dr. Sedhoff, who for
the past two decades has given therapeutic advice to the patients he has
treated as a family physician and therapist in Australia.
“We
all yearn for a deeply satisfying life filled with meaning, purpose, joy, and
inner peace,” he says. “Unfortunately,
many no longer prioritize and value friendships and the role they can play in
our lives.”
From
bullying and poverty to environmental destruction and terrorism, Dr. Sedhoff
firmly believes the cure is that we all need more and better friends. He also knows the world can be complex and
brutal and change won’t happen overnight.
But it has to begin somewhere, some day.
His book serves as a blueprint for how to make more friends, defines
what it means to be a good friend, and shows how to engage others so that the
role of human connection is elevated beyond social media interactions or
cursory and fleeting moments.
“Friendship,
seen and used in a different way, even without much effort, can positively
empower us and help us fix more problems in our lives and the world than we
might have imagined,” says the author.
His
book, recently featured in the UK Daily Mail, is being promoted by the public
relations firm that I work for. Here’s an interesting interview with him:
- Dr. Sedhoff, what inspired you
to write The Friendship Key? I was completely wrong about friendship. I had no idea
what it was about let alone its power, influence, around the world. Then I
suffered depression. By using principles I discovered to get out of it I
began to see friendship in a new way. Curious, I examined the role of
friendship in history. I was shocked to learn a persistent decline in
friendship has played – and continues to play – a massive role in horrible
human and environmental atrocities. We just keep making the same tragic,
unnecessary, mistakes over and over again – we have done for over five and
a half thousand years. What if we could finally break that destructive
cycle? I thought that worth sharing.
- Why do you believe your book is the key for
people to developing stronger relationships, equality, and even a better
job? At the core of every deep,
stable, and satisfying relationship is a close friendship. This book
outlines how to make that close friendship real and keep it close. Friendship, by its nature, promotes
equality. For example, at the core of friendship is be respected and
valued - treated as a worthwhile equal. When friendship is our priority,
as opposed to personal greed, gross inequality becomes near impossible. Friendship also fosters more, higher
quality, stable, jobs by promoting prosperous economies, internationally
competitive businesses, and better treatment of all working staff in a
more satisfying work environment. It also makes us more employable – more
likely to get that promotion.
- Why do we seem like a disconnected society
even though we are connected to so many people online? There is a difference between being connected online
and connecting physically. A good illustration of this is that loneliness
levels among the 18 to 25-year-old age group remains high in spite of them
being more technologically connected than any generation before them. An added contributor to our social
disconnect is many of us are more obsessed with getting ahead than
creating wholesome personal friendships – we are all too busy. I met a father
of a young family recently working over 90 hours per week just so they
could afford another house to rent for the extra income. Connecting online
cannot fill the hole our disconnection leaves behind, only real people,
meeting in friendship can do that.
- How can we do a better job of making
friends? The first step: make friendship
our priority. Friendships only happen if we put in the time and effort.
With so many of us focusing on other priorities the personal level of
connection needed to be good friends gets neglected, or worse,
ignored. Secondly, we can look to everyone as a
potential friend – as opposed to a potential enemy. Search for difference
in each other and we see potential enemies. Look for commonality and we
find lots of potential, and real, friends. Once we find our friend, we
work to keep them satisfied as our friend by continuing to meet the 10
friendship desires – to fulfil the essence of friendship we all search for
in everyone.
- You break down our human needs or desires
into 10 parts. Tell us what some of
them are and how they play a role in our friendships. Three examples of the 10 desires include our desires to
feel respected, valued, and heard. No
matter who we are we all seek respect, to be treated as an equal, not
ordered around as someone’s servant or slave, but as a compatriot of equal
social standing. We also seek to be
valued, to know we are important and worthwhile, to have others make the
time to be with us and be on time. And
we all want to tell our story and know that others get where we are coming
from, to emotionally connect with our experience of life – to really
listen. Wouldn’t you call someone a
friend if they truly valued, respected and listened to you?
- Has society underestimated the role of
friendship in our lives? Completely.
We barely know what friendship is anymore, let alone what it is capable
of. How many of us barely give friendship a second thought, as I once did;
nice if you have it but not that important? There was a time in history
when we needed friends to survive. Now we rely more on wealth and
influence instead; friendship barely gets a look in. The result, we have
neglected its essential, positive, qualities. We have forgotten, or failed
to see, that friendship fills a deep hole inside our hearts, it unites us,
promotes respect, caring, goodwill, tolerance, and compassion - it changes
how we treat ourselves, each other, and the world.
- Is our disconnected world tearing us apart
socially and personally? Most
definitely. A competitive world where we are encouraged to go it alone –
to make our own fortune to survive – promotes the fear others will take
what we have worked so hard for. This disconnect and inherent lack of
trust encourages us to treat each other as a potential threat – an enemy
as opposed to a friend. Soon we have a whole society filled with potential
or real enemies, scared, frustrated, angry, worried for their safety and
fighting for a better life – tearing itself apart. Amid the turmoil we
begin to believe there must be something wrong with me for others not to
care and want to know me – we doubt and begin to dislike ourselves. As
society fractures so do we.
- What role could friendship play in improving
worker satisfaction, productivity, communication, and innovation? It can improve them all. To work in a business that promotes the
10 components of friendship is to work among colleagues who value,
respect, care for, support, and listen to us. It is to be treated as a
feeling human being rather than a slave, robot, or someone’s property to
use and exploit. Friendship applied to business, by its nature, improves
communication and worker satisfaction. A friendship-friendly business also
ensures we all reap the rewards in an appreciative environment helping
motivate us to increase productivity. Friendship in business also promotes
flatter hierarchies – greater connection between staff on every level.
This allows for a freer sharing of ideas leading to increased flexibility
and innovation, continuing to make the business more competitive and
successful.
- How can one acquire more friends? First, we have to want them. If friendship isn’t important to us
others will pick up on it and not want to waste their time with us either
– friendship must be our priority from the start. Then we need to start looking for places
to find good friends, such as by finding groups of people we have
something in common with, like at work, in our church, book club, gym,
hiking or cycling group. Better still through friends we already share. To help entice others to want to be and
remain our friend we simply work on meeting their 10 desires of friendship
– regularly.
About The Author
In
his early 20s, Dr. Winfried Sedhoff suffered from depression. Over a 12-month internal quest he discovered
not only answers to his crisis but uncovered a sense of genuine self. More than 25 years later, having continuously
refined his approaches via his work as a family physician specializing in
mental health, he shares his insights with patients, colleagues., medical
trainees, and the general public via his books, A Balance of Self, A New Approach to Self -Understanding, Lasting
Happiness and Self-Truth (Vivid, 2011), The
Fall and Rise of Women, How Women Can Change the World (Ingram, 2016), and
now The Friendship Key to Lasting Peace,
United Communities, Stronger Relationships, Equality, and a Better Job!
(Senraan Publishing). He was recently
featured in the UK Daily Mail (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3803406/Brisbane-doctor-believes-men-women-shoud-not-close-friends.html). Winfried lives in Brisbane, Australia. For more information, please consult: www.winfriedsedhoff.com.
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Brian
Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas
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©2020. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His
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