OC, Baby

Compulsion - The irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.
Obsession: An irrational preoccupation; an unhealthy fixation.

"The part of our brain that deals with our needs is fragile—it’s easily disrupted and it occupies only a very small part of the brain.  In contrast, it’s not easy to disrupt the activation of an intense want.  Once people want a drug, it’s nearly permanent—it lasts at least a year in most people, and may last almost a whole lifetime.”  Berridge’s ideas explain why relapse is so common.  Even after you come to hate a drug for ruining your life, your brain continues to want the drug.  It remembers that the drug soothed a psychological need in the past, and so the craving remains."

This is a re-post of a recent post but it has had a lot of significance for me lately.  I really experience this kind of thinking, this kind of behavior in my life.  Momentum is hard to stop whether it be removing something harmful from my life or adding something helpful.  I imagine that most people are trying to change direction in a small Korean car traveling slowly - I'm the engineer of a long, long freight train moving way, way too fast.  I'm an aircraft carrier under full steam.  I have trouble getting stopped, reoriented, and moving in a different direction.

I haven't done anything hard in a psychological sense in a long time.  I haven't had to give up anything that caused me pain in a long time.  I haven't had to turn to god repeatedly in a long time.  I'm in touch with god but not asking for help frequently during the course of a day.  It makes me wonder at how I ever gave up drugs and alcohol and cigarettes.  I definitely remember that minute to minute fight to quench my strong desires when I was giving up those cravings - it was not easy.  I've gotten soft in the mental department.  I'm cruising.  I'm not even in the locomotive.  I'm back in the dining car eating cookies.

Happiness is the state of living in the present.  Happiness is not me thinking about me.  Definitely not that.

Spend my time and energy on the things that I can still do that give me satisfaction - not on lamenting the things that I once did but no longer can.