Listen to the complaints of your friends.
Offer no advice. Just laughter.
Make them find the funny side of it.
If they can laugh, they will find the solution.
You do not even need to be a funny person.
Just recall a mutual difficulty you faced in the past and how you got through it. An overcome difficulty from the past always brings laughter, or at least, a smile.
People either know the solutions to their problems or where to find it.
They just want to reduce inertia and increase activation energy to actually solve the problem. Laughter helps with both.
– Osasu Oviawe