Mindfulness and Friendship

Friendship is a topic with significant contemporary relevance both popularly and in academic areas such as philosophy and psychology. This could be due to the huge contemporary trend of focusing on well-being, of which social connectivity is a key component.

Simultaneously, there are many ways that mindfulness is being applied for a heightened experience and understanding of social and interactive phenomena in both physical and virtual reality in areas such as communication, collaboration, friendship, and love.

The central idea in mindfulness and friendship is to be volitional and active instead of passive with regard to friendships: learning and acknowledging that friendships are a dynamic process that needs deliberate focus and ongoing action-taking rather than a passive stance of acceptance. In fact, self-awareness of your own parameters, mindset, rules, and ethics of friendship is a good starting point, especially as your attitudes may be unconscious, and are likely to differ from those of others.

In the friendship context, there may be a greater tendency for conflict avoidance, e.g.; less awareness and interest in acknowledging and discussing issues, in a way that would be unavoidable in other interaction contexts like work or romantic relationships.