Dear Nabilah,

In my secondary school days, I met a wonderful human being who became my very best friend. We have mostly the same likes and dislikes, the same opinion, we like the same foods, music, movies etc. We simply see eye to eye and get along very well. We can chat nonstop into the wee hours of the night. Due to our friendship, all our families are now connected and socialize. My friend is very kind, generous, thoughtful, caring and selfless. He’s just the great friend anyone could wish to have. The only negative side of this wonderfulness is that he tends to be a little bit envious, especially about some of the things that are very important to me and he cannot hide his true feelings on these occasions. He only shows his envy on things that he knows are very monumental to my happiness. When it’s something that he knows I don’t give much importance to, no matter how grand it is, he wouldn’t show his toxic feelings. But if he knows I crave that particular something or achievement so much, then he shows those toxic feelings. He can’t stand me saying anything about my wife only for the simple reason that I’m in love with her. He’s always making snide, negative comments about her. It’s becoming hurtful and frustrating to me that I started feeling like I need to end this decades-long friendship but I’m scared of the repercussions it will bring, especially to our two families. What do you advise me to do?

-Friend or Foe?

Dear Friend,

I advise you to first try to find a solution before ending this wonderful friendship through any of the following ways:

If your friend is sensible and levelheaded in terms of acknowledging and admitting his mistakes and negative traits, I think you should bring this particular issue open for discussion between you two at an appropriate time and environment. Most people are completely unaware of their negative habits and its effects on people close to them, and some few will be able to admit and amend it when it’s brought to their attention in the best manner for their type of personality.

You can also write your friend a long explanatory letter or email sighting examples of occasions he showed his toxic feelings and how they hurt you. If your friend really cares for you and your friendship, and he’s not an egomaniac, he will see that he’s in the wrong and slowly make efforts to amend his negative habits.

You can also completely stop sharing with your friend things that are important to you, things that you love very much and things that make you happy. This way you will not be igniting his toxic feelings anymore.

You can also start to ease slowly out of the friendship instead of ending it completely. Reduce the amount of time you spend with him, and ease out of socializing with his family, with time, your friendship will start becoming ordinary and from there you can end it completely. The best way to end this type of friendship is if any one of you relocates to a different city, so if it’s possible, this is your best option.

Don’t make excuses and don’t feel guilty about making changes to this friendship. Toxic individuals are not worth your guilt. And next time be careful, at the first sign of a toxic element from a friend, colleague or relative, stay away promptly.

Looking for Ideas to boost sales and manage my children

Dear Nabilah,

I am a single mother of three young children. I recently started an online business to supplement my monthly income by advertising children’s clothes and accessories on social media. I love these particular attires, they are just so cute and heart-warming on young children. I choose the materials and design it myself and then pay someone to sew it. My problem is that I hardly get any orders. People just wow over the designs and how the colours match, and then nothing. It has been like this for more than five months that now I’m beginning to lose patience. I also recently started an online program to supplement my education on the off chance of better employment. My problem is that my children distract me so much whenever I connect to attend my classes. I am hoping you can direct me on some ways to help me get more orders and also how to manage my children so they won’t disturb me while attending online classes.

-Amateur entrepreneur.

Dear Entrepreneur,

I advise you to follow consistently, the three Ps of entrepreneurship which are passion, patience and persistence. Since you only recently started your business, a business you seem to be passionate about, you need only to follow the remaining two Ps, you have to be consistently patient and persist in your patience and soon success will be yours. Stop hoping for a quick, easy success. Only very few such businesses can boast of immediate success at their start. Also, you have to rake your brains and write compelling and eye-catching ads along with your designs. You can also find a suitable child to model the clothes for you so that potential customers can see your designs in all its glory. Just persist in your patience; tenacity always pays off at the end.

In order to curtail distraction from your children, the best way is to hire a babysitter or nanny if you can afford it. Or you arrange it so you will be taking your classes while they are at school. While sleeping in the night or find an engaging play for them to be doing while you take your classes. The best way to manage children is by a consistent routine. If they know that mummy will not be disturbed every day at 5 pm, slowly they will get used to it and stick to it.