I consider myself fortunate. I have some good friends; it wasn’t always thus and it takes time to find out who your true friends are. Mine are awesome.

​​​​​​​One of my friends is Olivia who wrote a courageous post of Facebook recently which got me thinking that at some point we all come to realise that we’ve been trying for a long time to change something about our habits or behaviours and haven’t done it.

It may have to do with exercise, relationships, learning, fears, guilt, diet, or any number of issues. We’re aware of it, we know it’s important, and we have to constantly remind ourselves to deal with it. But we don’t.

Instead we keep thinking that we’re going to get it done now or get round to it tomorrow. You’re not. If you haven’t done it to this point, and you deem it important, you need help. That’s the first step-recognising that you can’t do this alone. The overwhelming odds are that you’re not going to make the desired changes by yourself.

That’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all need help at one time or another. No matter what our position, station, or situation in life, we arrive at junctures where we need others’ help to successfully continue the journey.

Here’s what Olivia said (with her permission of course). “In the past, I’ve found it hard to ask for help – after all, ‘independence’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ were attributes that were much prized by my parents as I grew up. I’ve subsequently come to see that collaboration and inter-connectedness are much more the name of the game (at least for me) and I’m quietly proud of how I’m now finding it easier and easier to ask for help, rather than thinking that I should be able to do it all myself (and that if I couldn’t, there was ‘something wrong with me’)”.

There are those who never realise that; there are those who realise it but their egos prevent them from asking; and there are those who easily and constantly ask.

Which are you?