This is episode 1722.

Welcome to the Daily Guided Meditation.

How are you doing?

I'm Mary Meckley and I'm honored you are here getting ready to do one of the best

things you could possibly do for yourself and that is to meditate. In today's episode you are going to discover a meditation technique to allow your true authentic self to shine forth.

And this is truly the way to create those friendships of the great, as C.S. Lewis described

a few episodes back. I shared how he described those friendships of the

great to be the enduring lifelong friendships that make such a difference in your quality of life.

And I want to share with you a message I received from a fellow meditator who listens

here to the podcast and he reached out wanting to know if I could share some insight on what to do if you have trouble making friends,

maintaining the friendship and cultivating friendships in general.

And I thought this was such a great question

because as I did some research, I discovered how lonely and isolated we have become.

And so in this episode, you will discover how to best connect with people who you have something in common with and then how to keep a friendship going based on a mutual interest and then how to cultivate more friendships.

So, when you think about how to go about finding good friends are just simply finding a friend.

Most of the research suggested working on yourself first.

And that doesn't necessarily mean improving yourself, suddenly becoming this new, better person.

Because who you are is just fine.

If you just hone your skills a little bit by becoming aware of your best qualities, the qualities you have

within you already that others would appreciate.

This might seem obvious, but actually,

it's so common to conceal your best qualities because you may feel as though you might be rejected and so you might reveal more of your superficial qualities.

...