By Denise Turney
Real friends don’t agree with everything you think, say or do. They challenge you when you start veering away from your goals, your intentions and what you believe in deeply. Without real friends, you could derail and not realize it until you look up and see that your life is hanging over a cliff.

Real friends make up the sweetest nectar of life

Another thing that real friends do is to encourage and motivate you to keep going when you feel like quitting. Without friends, more than a few great achievers might have joined the ranks of those of us who give up on their dreams. Even more, because friends know you well, they can see through your self-deception. Although you may not like it, your friends know when you’re trying to sell yourself a bag of lies. They’re willing to stomach your anger in order to get a good message through to you.

Yet, perhaps most of all is the way that real friends mirror your worth to you. When given the choice, they opt to visit and spend time with you rather than putting in another hour of work, showing you that you matter more than a buck.

You don’t have to worry about real friends gossiping about you behind your back. In fact, real friends don’t gossip at all. They realize that we’re all in this together and that attack in any form is an attack of themselves, you and everyone.

Point is, you have to be self-aware and inwardly healthy to be a real friend. You’ve got to be selfish enough to seek out other people who are self-aware to hang out with, people who add lift and true power to your life. You also have to want to receive the same level of honesty from others that you dish out. Rather than “getting it real,” you opt to care for others. You’re not brutally honest; you’re lovingly honest.

Real friends make life worth living. They make life sweet. How many real friends do you have and are you a real friend to anyone?

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in my new book, Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.