(Approx 2 minute 45 second read)

Why do people obsess over things?
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People obsess for many reasons, and some are more prone to it than others.
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You might try to make sense of a situation but can’t quite understand or accept it, so you keep replaying it. Others want reassurance that they were right – especially if they feel, deep down, that they might have been wrong.
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Some people obsess because they’re trying to solve a problem or prevent something similar from happening again, but they can’t find the answer. And others just want to feel heard or validated, or want to feel justified in absolving themselves of responsibility.
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In the martial arts world, it’s easy to get stuck on one idea, believing your way is the only way. But the truth is, martial arts are full of diversity, and no one has all the answers – not me, not anyone.
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My writings are simply my thoughts, shaped by years of training and experience. They aren’t absolute truths for all people – how could they be? Who honestly holds all the answers? Certainly not me. They’re just one perspective, and I’m comfortable with others seeing things differently.
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At the end of the day, karate – like life – is about learning, understanding, and being open to change, not holding too tightly to just one way of thinking.
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To be honest, I do obsess over things sometimes, almost to the point of OCD (or CDO if we’re putting the letters in the correct order, as they should be [joke]).
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When habits I’ve built through training are interrupted for whatever reason and I can’t do them at the time I usually do, I find it incredibly irritating. Right now I structure my day a certain way, and when that changes it feels ‘off’ somehow – difficult to get back into rhythm.
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We all have our way of doing things. Some are more structured, others more haphazard. We’re all different. And this is where patience and tolerance need to be applied. We can’t all follow the same path. Maybe we can walk some of it together, but sooner or later there will always be a fork that one of us takes and the other doesn’t.
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You have to understand that in yourself and in others. It should never be ‘it’s my way or the highway’. There must always be space for people to make their own choices. In the end, the only authority you truly have is over yourself.
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Sometimes the smallest things get blown out of proportion. A simple habit, a harmless quirk, or a minor irritation becomes, in someone else’s eyes, a huge character flaw.
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Yet the same people may overlook far bigger issues in others without a second thought. It’s strange how that works. In karate we talk about perspective, what looks like a mistake from one angle is nothing from another. Life is the same. People choose which faults to magnify and which ones to ignore, and often it has very little to do with the actual size of the problem.
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Perhaps the hardest part is letting go of the need to control how others think, feel, or act. In the dojo and in life, people will make decisions that don’t align with what you hoped for or expected.
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You can spend hours turning it over in your mind, trying to understand why, but sometimes there simply isn’t an answer that satisfies you. And you have to make peace with that. Not everything can be fixed, solved, or understood the way you want it to be.
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In the end, obsessing doesn’t change anything. It only drains you. What does help is accepting that people walk their own paths, with their own reasons, even if they never explain them to you. That’s not weakness or surrender, it’s clarity.
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And when you reach that point, you stop holding on so tightly and start carrying on with your own journey, with a little more calm than before.
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Written by Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo