Friendship Month!

Friendship Month! Every October at KFMA we celebrate our friendships and focus on how to make new friends and to be thankful for the ones we already have! This is also a great time for our younger students to learn the differences between simple acquaintances and real friends. As stated in the book of Sirach: “A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure.”

We live in a fast-paced digital age, where so many find the majority of their social interactions online. For many kids growing up in this age, it can be difficult to learn how to start conversations with other kids, and to open up about their own interests. For this reason, we developed our KFMA Friendship Worksheet.

What is Friendship Month at KFMA

Every October, all of our students receive a friendship worksheet, and their task is to interview four other classmates at KFMA face-to-face. They learn to ask simple ice-breaker type questions and then write down their responses. Students are asked to interview younger and older students, as well as those lower and higher in rank, so that they can learn to be comfortable talking with a variety of people. This teaches them to listen to others, and it allows them to share their own personalities with their fellow students. This is how friendships begin, as you begin to discover others who have common interests that you can share together. This is also one of the amazing things about our Family Martial Arts classes, as Kids, Teens and Adults all work side-by-side in the same classes learning and developing together.

The True Value of Friends

Having friendships does more than teach us to listen. It teaches us empathy, patience, and at some point, it usually involves forgiveness as none of us are perfect. Maintaining friendships takes some work, as it’s important to set aside time to foster the friendship. Taking the time out of our busy schedules to make a phone call to check on a friend, setting aside an afternoon for lunch; these things take effort, but they are also vital to keeping friendships alive and healthy.

The value of real friendships are many! From a mental health standpoint, having friends improves your quality of life. For example, when you are watching a great movie, or going to a sporting event, it certainly is more fun when you have someone else to share the experience. You can talk about it and share the positive emotions together. Just as important, when you run into challenges in life, it is important to have friends that you trust so they can share your concerns. This helps to lessen anxiety and reduce stress. Friends can also be a great sounding-board when we are weighing tough decisions, and they can offer a viewpoint we may not have considered.

Friendship in Today’s Culture

When so much of social media focuses on how many ‘likes’ a post receives, or how many followers you have, it’s easy to lose focus of what really counts in life. Quick texts or posts can easily replace real conversations, and a fast emoji is used for self-expression. Unfortunately, this is not true communication between close friends. Rather than having many acquaintance-type friends that we never see or spend time with, what we really need are a few who, in the words of Ben Sirach,  are “a sturdy shelter.” This adds immensely to our quality of life.

When we approach the end of our days, very few people will wish they had worked more hours or made more money, but many will wish they had set aside more time to spend with their friends and loved ones and to have shared more laughter.

For more information on the life skills taught at KFMA, please take a look at this article: https://teamkowkabany.com/kfma-teaches-life-skills/

If you’re interested in making some new friends at KFMA, as well as in developing your martial arts skills or improving your fitness, please feel free to give us a call at 813-540-5528. KFMA is located at 13910 Monroes Business Park, just two doors down from the Tampa Bay Brewing Company off Racetrack Road.

Kowkabany’s Family Martial Arts is chartered with the American Taekwondo Association: https://atamartialarts.com/