How To Lose Friends Without Really Trying

If hindsight is 20/20, perhaps it’s easier to learn how not to do something.

Case in point: relationships. It’s easier to neglect friendships than it is to maintain them. And don’t think anyone is immune to destructive behavior. A pastor, perhaps suffering from compassion fatigue, once boasted that if his church got too large, he could “whittle it down in one or two services.”

Oddly enough, he’s still a pastor, though it’s doubtful his church or his people will ever grow to maturity. Because he’s chosen a pattern of behavior that is self-destructive. The problem is that what he does affects others. The same is true with each of us.

So here are a few tips on how to destroy relationships wherever they may be found—home, work, church, and throughout everyday life.

1. Sweat the small stuff; everything is important—and urgent—to you.
2. Insist on being right at all times, about everything.
3. Discount, if not disregard, the opinions and ideas and feelings of others.
4. Be inflexible, intolerant, insensitive, and inconsiderate.
5. Be steadfast, immovable, and implacable regarding your opinions.
6. Remember, rehearse, and recite your past pain.
7. Refuse to change who you are and how you act.
8. Always blame others; never accept personal responsibility.

Do these things and you will succeed in alienating people and losing friends. In the process, you will ensure that your life will remain insignificant.


Want to learn more? Visit http://praisechapelkingman.podblaze.com to hear a sermon by Senior Pastor Howard Pennington or any of our pastors or guest speakers.