“Obsession led me to write. It’s been that way with every
book I’ve ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by
characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.” ~ Anne Rice
An obsession is consuming. It often pushes other activities into the
background. It compels and fills your thoughts and impassions your soul
with desire. It becomes the beat of your heart and the pulse of your
being. It drives you ever forward toward its object.
And while obsessive behavior can destroy and corrupt happiness,
robbing it of a sense of freedom and will and sometimes even land you in
prison, certain kinds of controlled obsessions can enhance the quality
of your life. I recommend the following …
1. Be Obsessed with Kindness
Are you drawn to kindness like a child to candy? Do you regularly
think about how you can bless the lives of others? Do you wish you could
do more?
An obsession with kindness can be seen in those who are constantly
reaching out to do good. They are seen in soup kitchens, ladling soup,
in food banks, boxing food and cleaning up after natural disasters.
Such people’s hearts are filled with love and compassion and charity.
They care about others, even those they don’t know and have never met.
And it’s an obsession that will draw the best from you as you reach
out in service to others. It is guaranteed to add meaning to life and
purpose to living.
2. Be Obsessed with Excellence
No matter what you do, be the best you can be at what you’re doing
within the time frame you have for doing it. If you have only 10 minutes
to prepare for a presentation, for instance, then be the most focused
and diligent preparer for each and every one of those 600 seconds.
Make excellence your motto and your theme song. Those obsessed with
excellence can usually be found congregating at the top of their
classes, at the top of corporate ladders and on the top of winner’s
platforms.
They show up to practices first and are the last ones to leave. They
are self-motivated and yearn to improve and add value and innovate. They
also inspire others to excellence by pursuing it and exemplifying it in
themselves.
They go the extra mile and do those things others aren’t willing to
do. Often, it’s the small things that put them at the top. They work on
their free throw longer than others. They make the phone calls no one
wants to make. They follow through and plan and pay attention to the
details.
3. Be Obsessed with Happiness
You only have one mortal life. It can be filled with frustration and
anger, bitterness, hatred, suspicion and resentment. Or we can become
obsessed with developing those characteristics happy people possess.
People obsessed with their own happiness, when pursued correctly,
find themselves very unfocussed on themselves in the long run. They
quickly learn that the happiest people are focused on others. They
develop traits like patience, compassion and gratitude. They smile
freely and laugh often.
They are obsessed with seeing the good in the bad and believing that,
with a little work, things will work out in the long run even if they
aren’t working out yet today.
4. Be Obsessed with Gratitude
What a wonderful obsession to have! Such people possessed with this
obsession habitually see beauty and opportunity and decency and humor
even in life’s most trying moments. Not only are they obsessed with
expressions of gratitude, they’re obsessed with being grateful, with
feeling it deep inside.
They have an incurable passion for seeing the good and interpreting
life in terms of its blessings even when others only see its pain.
5. Be Obsessed with Wisdom
Those plagued by this obsession hunger and thirst for knowledge and
intellectual growth. But most of all, they seek to understand the wise
application of that knowledge.
Knowing is one thing. Knowing how and why and if, is another.
If being smart is your capacity to learn and knowledge is what you’ve
learned, then wisdom is knowing when and where and why that knowledge
should be applied in any particular way … and when it shouldn’t be.
That understanding is what is obsessed over. And so those obsessed
with wisdom spend lots of time learning and thinking. They study a broad
range of knowledge.
But they spend a particularly large amount of their study time with
wisdom literature, reading deeply from philosophical and religious and
spiritual texts.
Their libraries display books like Aristotle’s Ethics, Marcus
Aurelius’s Meditations, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Bible and Buddha’s
Dhammapada, among others.
6. Be Obsessed with Character
A wit and intellect, a great sense of humor, popularity, a great personality are not enough for those obsessed with character.
They believe character, their personal commitment to a set of moral
standards, is more important than gold or power or prestige. They’re
protective of it and don’t place themselves in circumstances where they
may be tempted to act against it.
They are not at the mercy of their emotions. They don’t excuse bad behavior by citing bad feelings.
Such obsessives are very comfortable talking about morals and ethics
and values and standards. They talk freely of courage and love, of
humility, honesty and decency.
They work on being compassionate and kind. Their honor and integrity
cannot be bought and are never compromised. Those so obsessed therefore
tend to be deeply respected, trusted and admired. They see moral flaws
of pride and selfishness as things to be overcome. Their word is their
bond.
They stand for something which strengthens their sense of purpose.
The beauty of those obsessed with character is that they seldom ever
wince when they look deeply into a mirror, peering into the depths of
their own souls. As such, they sleep peacefully, undisturbed by the
pangs of conscience or guilt or shame.
7. Be Obsessed with Growth
Personal growth obsessives are uncomfortable with plateaus and
stagnation. They cringe at statements like, “That’s just the way I am”
or “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
They challenge themselves and look for opportunities to learn and
overcome, to stretch and become something better than they were before.
They grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally, professionally, and in
their relationships. They work on their character and review their days
and weeks and months and years to see how they can improve next time
around.
They go to seminars and check out personal growth tapes from the
public library. They read and work out and eat well and push themselves
outside their comfort zones with regularity.
They welcome challenge because of the growth they experience from it.
And because they are so dedicated to growth in general, they never
become too lopsided, dedicated to one area of growth to the utter
neglect of others.
Afterthoughts
“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent;
curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance … have brought me to my
ideas.” ~ Albert Einstein
Obsessions are tricky things. While those obsessed with whatever it
is that drives them and defines them are those who tend to cluster at
the top of any industry (sports, entertainment, business, whatever),
those obsessed with what they do often struggle in other areas of their
very successful lives.
Divorce, estranged children, character flaws made huge by media
attention and health problems are commonplace among some of the people
who have obsessed their way into the public spotlight.
There are healthy forms of obsession – a passionate form of
dedication and drive – that leads to great things if you use that
passion to move you steadily toward your goals instead of being
controlled by those inordinate levels and kinds of obsessive qualities.
But an obsession with life, with living it well, fully, immersed in
the joys of it, filled to capacity with the passion of living it,
engulfed in the flow and rising tide of deep abiding happiness is an
obsession that we would all do well to acquire.
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