By Dina Aldabbagh

I’ve learned that in every situation, if you want to have a higher level of anything, the process of getting there has to be normalized for you. Working out every day, eating in a healthy way, putting in X hours of work per day — anything that you do that requires more work cannot feel like it requires more work in order for you to be consistent with it. If it feels to you like it takes a lot out of you — like you’re constantly doing something huge by doing it — then you will stop. The only way something continues is if it feels normal to you.

To some, what looks like obsession must feel normal for you if you want to continue doing it. If it feels like you’re constantly swimming upstream, it won’t last very long. It has to feel easy enough to keep doing. You must make it normal. This is done by just continuing to do it. More reps = more normalized.

But that behavior must become your new baseline. It must be like, “Okay, this is ground zero. This is the bare minimum.” Otherwise, it’ll soon enough go. You can change anything and everything about yourself as a person and your life, you must only be consistent long enough that it feels normal. Others may look on and say, “Woah, that’s obsession” — and they can, but it won’t feel like it to you.

There’s a true difference between those who get far fast and those whose steady effort produces progress so gradual it’s sometimes imperceptible: obsession. Those who improve so rapidly that you feel like, at every turn, you see a newer, stronger, more developed version of them, are nothing less than obsessed. But their obsession is normalized. It doesn’t feel like they’re forcing effort; they’re putting forth effort, sure, but the key is that it seems like a normal level of effort for them to get something they want. To the eyes of others, it’s very clear that it’s a level of focus, intention, and investment that is a deviation from the norm, but to them it feels like, “I want this…so of course this is how caring about something looks like. 

Simply put, that’s the difference between those who get what they want almost constantly and those who don’t. Don’t get me wrong, those who are obsessed feel like they’re not far ahead. Their perspective on things is so skewed to see how much they still have to do rather than how far they’ve already come that they constantly feel like they’re in a humbling place. Only in those brief moments of comparison to others do they see, “Wow, I am ahead.” They don’t feel ahead. They have the perspective of where exactly they want to go and they see how they are not there yet, and competency actually sneaks up on them. 

They have moments of realization that they are better than they thought. And another key distinction: it seems like they are constantly getting everything they want, but that’s not how it’s always experienced by them. In a way they are — but to them they constantly feel the distance and the separation from them and their desires. So yes, eventually they always get what they want, but they don’t live off of the one moment. Those who are obsessed feel all the moments in between much more strongly. They feel all the moments in which they do not have — and interestingly enough, their level of fulfillment doesn’t come from that one moment of “getting it,” but rather the multitude of tiny realizations that they are progressing closer to it — closing the gap. 

To the naked eye, someone who is charging so strongly forward towards a goal is obsessed. Someone whose focus is on one thing and their intensity is so high that it essentially consumes their life is, in fact, obsessed. To the obsessed person, however, this feels utterly mundane. “Of course I’d put in this level of effort,” they’d say, because anything less than that would, to them, feel like they don’t even care. 

They don’t say, “I want to lose weight,” and then very casually just try to lightly make decisions to hopefully lose weight. Not that that is wrong, by the way. But no, when they want to lose weight, they say, “I’m losing weight,” and then weigh and track their food, cook their meals, plan their week, structure their training, and stick to the plan. The obsessed are the kind of people who make results absolutely inevitable. And it’s key to say: to be obsessed is not more or less right than to be the kind who oh-so very lightly decides things and lets them take the time they take. They’re just different. 

The person who is obsessed cares about speed. I think their awareness of their goal and tracking of where they currently are in relation to it sets up in them a kind of urgency that propels them forward into action. The obsessed are not passive; they are action-oriented. They have some lingering sense like they are behind and therefore need to put in the intensity required to accelerate up to speed. 

The key here is this: they feel that the “speed” they sense they should be going at is the average — the norm. That’s why their obsession doesn’t feel like too much, it feels adequate. If this emotional posture had to be put into words, it’d say, “Yes of course I need to catch up to be there. This is the level of acceleration required to get me to what feels normal for me.” 

And here’s the most beautiful part of it all: by the time they catch up to “normal,” they are already far ahead. In a way, their sense of inadequacy functions like a slingshot. As the Bible says, “The appetite of laborers works for them; their hunger drives them on” (NIV Proverbs 16:26). Without the hunger — that sense of being behind — there is much less of a need to drive forward with intensity. Incremental, reasonable progression deserves its due credit, but the obsessive laborer must feel that progression on a constant basis to not feel behind. And that hunger to satisfy the sense of movement and progression puts the obsessed further ahead in less time. They need constant movement. They almost cannot bear the sensation of plateaus or aimless waiting. Everything must have its purpose in the pursuit of progression — even waiting.  

I’ve seen this principle demonstrated through my own life. When I was in 6th grade, I decided I wanted to join the school band — in which students enroll in grade 5. That meant I was one year behind. I spoke to the band coordinator and he said, “Well……I could let you join, but you’d have to catch up. We won’t be able to give you dedicated time to learn during our band practices,” which took place once a week, “so you’ll have to learn apart from the band practices and when you’re up to speed I can allow you to join the group.” 

I agreed and for the following time, I met with this band coordinator during each of my recesses in elementary school to learn and practice. Eventually I was welcomed to join the entire band practice, and when I did, I discovered something: my skill level was ahead of most of theirs. It was an interesting and almost disorienting realization. For all that time leading up, I felt this sense of being behind — like I wasn’t as good as the others. However, after an intensive daily practice for some time, I ended up launching ahead in terms of skill. 

Witness clearly what’s happening here: I wasn’t good enough to join the band right away. I had a lot of catching up to do. Because of that, I ended up putting in more work than those who had been in the band for a year — meeting once a week and touching their instrument likely only that much. I became one of the best. 

This is the principle at play of the obsessed. All of those greats you see, I think they must be living out a similar play. I think each of those greats see what they could be, and it becomes an almost jarring realization to see where they are now. Therefore they put in more focused, concentrated effort in a shorter time — and they come out ahead. 

I think what might be lost on many people is the sense that intensity has to last forever. Sure, maybe for Michael Jordan and Novak Djokovic the intensity doesn’t end until retirement, but I think on a more common life scale, you just have to put in enough intensity for a short amount of time to get the result. By the end of the sprint, you’re already ahead, and maintenance kicks in. Intensity subdues. You just have to get to that level of “normal” so you can take your foot off the gas.

When I was learning Spanish, it was full intensity. Every day, I obsessively immersed myself with the language. Eventually, I just became fluent. Today? It’s maintenance. I engage with the language daily, but on a relaxed level. It’s become an integrated part of my life, so maintenance doesn’t feel heavy. I have friends who I speak with in Spanish, I listen to the music, I write and read certain topics in Spanish — maintenance of this level is natural. However, the sprint back then was crucial. You can study a language for years on duo lingo, and yet not feel any more adept at utilizing it in real life.   

There are certainly different levels of obsession to be found in people, and from my own understanding of it, I’ve come to see that it only looks like obsession from a wider lens. When you’re the one living that life, it feels like the normal level of effort you’re called to put in. Anything less would feel too little to achieve your goal. 

Now having separated myself from my time of first learning Spanish, I can call it what it actually was: obsession. It wasn’t passive. It was active, constant, and driven. It was as though I was constantly seeking out that thing that would “make me fluent.” Obviously, there’s not just a single key, but in the search of that, I think I was just overall made much better at the language until fluency was the inevitable result. 

I never actually felt like I “arrived” at fluency — I just kept speaking and engaging with the language until I realized, “…Oh…I’m already here. This is what fluency looks like.” It’s like that story of the young fish swimming up to the older fish and asking, “Excuse me, I’m looking for this thing called the ocean.” The older fish replies, “The ocean? You’re in the ocean.” And with a skewed perspective, the younger fish says, “This isn’t the ocean. This is water. What I want is the ocean.”

To be honest, I think that younger fish is very representative of what most of the obsessed people in this world look like. They’re so future oriented that it’s difficult to perspectivize where they’re already at, so it only feels normal to charge ahead. 

I’m not sure if you can force obsession. I don’t know that it’s possible to force yourself to care about something you don’t. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But maybe that’s not really the point. Maybe the point isn’t to make yourself care about something that you just don’t care about, but rather to find what you genuinely do care about. I don’t feel the need to follow Michael Jordan’s steps to lead the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships, but I do feel a similar level of obsession, I’d say, with my own passions. We’re all unique individuals, meant to have our own personal testimonies — I think the point is to allow yourself to get obsessed about what you truly do care about, and let that define your life.