The easiest and best way to have friends is to start being our own friend.

What do we want in a friend? Do we look for someone who accepts us as we are, someone who doesn't constantly criticize and complain, someone who enjoys what we enjoy and is a good companion, someone who encourages us in our endeavours and listens calmly and compassionately when we are sorting through things?

If we ask for these qualities and more in our friends, do we ask for them in ourselves?

Do we give ourselves acceptance? Do we refrain from constantly criticizing and complaining about ourselves, our lives, others? Do we encourage ourselves and extend ourselves calm compassion?

When we start developing these qualities in ourselves, we then start to see them reflected in others.

When we start being friends, real friends, to ourselves and to others, our friends become real friends, too.

As we begin to learn to accept ourselves, to be supportive and encouraging to ourselves, our friends begin to reflect that acceptance and that supportive encouragement. If our previous friends are incapable of being real friends, they lose interest in us, and we start attracting those with the capacity for real friendship.

Going about being a good friend to ourselves is simple and direct, actually easy, in the true ease of easy: we develop in ourselves that which we may formerly have sought in others.

This is real freedom, for we no longer need to depend on looking outside of ourselves for what we want and feel we need.

We don't have to agonize over what others think of us when we free ourselves to be what we'd like to see in others. Because we open ourselves to our best and give ourselves approval and acceptance, we're free to go about our lives without chronic anxiety, without fretting over what others may think of us.

Freedom is doing both what we must do and what we want to do with equanimity.

And freedom unfolds most easily and effectively when we open ourselves to be the best we would love to see in others.