Turning Obsession into Commitment
Filed Under (Health) by Cynthia on Nov 26, 2008 8:40 am
Tagged Under : Anxiety, Mental Health
The mysterious and ubiquitous ‘They’ say it can take from six months to a year of doing something to establish a good habit of it. Like going for a nightly walk, eating more healthy, or even cleaning the house.
Well, for people like me, six months to a year is the time line in which I can completely obsess about something. Actually, looking over my past, I usually obsess about things for up to five years. Examples…? I have a few.
Obsession
Dog sports: I got into dog sports in about 2003. I started in agility and I thought, ate, and breathed agility. I even got another dog to do agility with (Chase, I already was doing agility with Levi). I have done so much agility in the last five years, on the weekends, that I haven’t done much else on the weekends. I even bought a camcorder and recorded many of my runs. Now I have too many DVDs to go through! I still love dog sports but I need to balance them with other things in my life.
Knitting: Yup did it with knitting too! When I started I knitted like a fiend. Now I haven’t knitted for some time. I have a pair of socks I want to get finished and I haven’t found the time to do so. I really do love to knit! I need that balance thing again.
Blogging: I started blogging and I filled my time with it for about a year, year and a half. And now I’m kinda getting burned out! But I like making a wee bit of extra money from blogging, and I’ve met some really good people blogging. And now thanks to the Feedly feed reader I keep up with most of them! So I want to even off my blogging and turn it into a commitment, instead of an obsession.
Eating Healthy: About three or so years ago I picked up a copy of the book Eat to Live and followed the plan in there religiously for about a year and a half, maybe two years. This is, of course, a good thing. I dropped 20 pounds and I exercised and jogged and lifted weights too. I was looking great! However… after the obsession turned into fatigue and burnout, I stopped. That’s my problem with obsession.
Men: Well this one goes without saying. Most of my younger life I didn’t love or commit to men. I obsessed about them. Current husband included. With him, I think it took me about five years to slowly turn from being obsessed, to being committed.
Commitment
So what is commitment? I never really knew when I was younger. Before I went to my three years of therapy to figure out that I was severely codependent I didn’t even know how horribly unhealthy my behaviors were. And now, of course, there’s something else to deal with… this obsession v commitment thing. If I want to turn obsession into commitment, I have to either approach what I’m doing differently or, if it’s something not entirely unhealthy like eating right, learn to turn the obsession into commitment so I can continue doing it.
What brings this up? Probably my weight. I’ve gained back about 15 pounds. I’ve been trying Weight Watchers but it’s not been working for me. Probably too many snacks… but I think I have to eat veggies. I have to go back to Eat To Live. And stick with it. I can even track my points on WW if I want to. But I really think I have to go reread Eat To Live and eat my pound of raw vegetables, and pound of cooked vegetables, every day. And yes yes, I need to go back to exercising too. I want to go for a walk with my husband every day, or every other day. I either forget or make an excuse not to.
As for the relationship part, I am very, very excited to say that I have completely made the transition from obsession to commitment with my husband. I love him very much. I am committed to him. We have a great time together, and we also do our own things. I really love the relationship we have. He’s not working, but money isn’t everything. In fact, money is one of the lowest priorities in a relationship. Okay okay maybe if I didn’t make so bleeding much money it’d be an issue. And when I retire he’ll need to work to carry insurance. But that’s five years away, and so I tell him he has five years to find a job! 
So I want to learn to approach things with a commitment mindedness instead of an obsession mindedness. I’m not sure how to do this. I get mixed feelings… I resent having to do something, even if it’s self-enforced like eating healthy or exercising. But at the same time I know it’s best for me. So maybe I need to make a plan… maybe I can obsess about a plan! LOL…. no no no, obsession isn’t good. And when I can obsess about something for one to five years, and I know that after that my obsession will die off and so will the good activity, I need to find a different way to establish a good habit and a good commitment. And I want more balance in my life. Obsession makes for little, if any, balance. And time is, of course, always an issue. The lack thereof, I mean.
So now I try to learn how to commit, not obsess. And how to balance. I’m not sure how, though!
On this day..
- Loving Thanksgiving - 2009
[...] very quickly. It was awesome. Since then I’ve fallen off the wagon, of course. As usually I obsess about things instead of commit to them. So now I want to turn the obsession into commitment. Both have left [...]