I stared at the screen of our main PC and watched the hard drive icon disappear. It couldn’t be good by anyone’s description – and even worse as an author in the last stages of editing a manuscript.

I’d actually been trying to do the right thing by backing up the files, but apparently it was beyond the poor PC’s capacity. So I called in our local IT guru. His diagnosis, ‘So … how important were those files?’

Interestingly, when a hard drive health check was run, the computer rated itself fantastically, even though it was stuttering its way through each assessment. This got me thinking. How often do we get caught in unhealthy cycles in life, but don’t have the perspective to identify it?

You’ve probably heard mention of us knowing ourselves best. But at times, I think we can really miss it. Sometimes life just sneaks up on us and gradually we find ourselves in less than positive circumstances, not living to our potential. Other times a crisis might rock our world and, over time, we slip down a darkened road that leads to nowhere. Even if we identify non-beneficial habits, often we can’t work out quite how to change things – or even what needs changing.

As a writer I see this frequently in manuscript development. You write your heart out, read it back and revise your work, until it seems of a quality standard. Then someone, either a reader or editor, revises it and points out a minor ‘bad habit’ or plot inconsistency, and you wonder how on earth you ever missed it. Worse, you start seeing the same trait in all your work!

Just like the computer, we’re not always so great at self-diagnosis – in any area. It can be all too easy to ignore personal (or writing!) challenges, toxic habits and less than positive life choices. (Or is that just me? 🙂 ) But where does that lead us long term?

Whether it be in writing or life, we really need to built a network of trusted people in our world who have healthy insight and enough ‘care factor’ to help us stop doing wasteful loops based on a faulty self-diagnosis. These might be friends, family or wise professionals, but if we can’t think of at least two people who fit this role in our world, maybe it’s a prompt to reach out and start building new, healthy, connections.

Reaching out calls us to be brave, vulnerable, and willing to invest time and energy into that relationship. Over time, we can also become that person for someone else, building a positive way forward together.