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If You Want To Be A Good Friend, You Must Do This One Thing

Protect your friends by vetting people you bring into their lives. Here’s how.

Mike Goldberg
3 min readAug 7, 2021
Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Whenever I develop a relationship with somebody, I like to think about how I can provide value to that person. I’d love to be the reason that somebody is able to solve a problem, or discovers something new.

But if experience has taught me anything, I know good intentions could go horribly wrong.

I know you’ve been there too. It happens.

The Latin phrase “Primum non nocere”, translates out to “first, to do no harm”. In fact, part of the Hippocratic Oath includes a promise “to abstain from doing harm”, and I found that pretty profound.

To me, that means: try to do good, but if you can’t, try not to make things worse.

When you apply that to your social and personal life, this is where you can gain a very valuable skill. But in order to do that, you are going to have to develop a special insight.

Once you have earned somebody’s trust, it is your responsibility as a friend to make sure that none of your actions cause harm to them.

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Mike Goldberg
Mike Goldberg

Written by Mike Goldberg

3x Top Writer | Traveler | Real estate investor | Storyteller | Occasional columnist | I talk about personal growth and seizing opportunities.

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